Diagnostic Centres, Chelsea & Westminster Hospital

The Brief

On the former site of St Stephen’s Hospital, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital was opened in 1993 after just five years of construction. It combined the staff, services and equipment from five previous London hospitals and now offers a range of community based services across London.

The new facility needed to bring together a number of diagnostic services that were previously spread across the hospital. This included the combination of four departments: Endoscopy, Cardiology, Lung Function and Neurophysiology. The new design for the centre needed to use the site efficiently, while optimising the use of shared space between these vital departments.

Our Solution

The creation of a new Diagnostics Centre located on the second floor of the hospital was severely constrained by space but through an intelligent design, we were able to create a space to exactly how staff would use it.

The design responded to a need to move the character of the space forward and reflect a modern healthcare environment with new identity, while maintaining the critical clinic functions with established clinical pathways.

We held a number of meetings with key stakeholders to identify areas of concern, like storage, circulation and acoustic transmission, so we could work around them and keep in mind our budgetary constraints.

“The design went through many iterations; inevitable when balancing clinical requirements, constraints of space and design ambitions, but at all stages Lawray was accommodating and remained enthusiastic”.

– Alan Kaye, Diagnostic Services Manager for Chelsea and Westminster Hospital