Finally: A cool looking hospital

Woven steel panels encasing the boiler house at Guy’s Hospital in London by Thomas Heatherwick.

Hospitals are rarely exciting to look at. That was the idea behind the post: Why No Cool Looking Hospitals on this blog last summer.

I have finally discovered a hospital that does look cool, at least on the outside. This week's New Yorker had one of their architectural reviews cover a renovation of Guy's Hospital that would have to be called cool. The article, written by Paul Goldberger describes how Thomas Heatherwick approached this project:

...he started “thinking about what it would be like to be an old lady who is ill and being driven to the hospital by her grandson.” This led him to reorganize the flow of traffic at the hospital’s entrance, move a parking area, change the lighting and signage, and, finally, to wrap part of the hospital’s exterior with huge, undulating panels of woven, stainless-steel braid, giving the building a surface of rolling chain-mail bulges. Heatherwick didn’t see fixing the traffic as the practical side of the job and decorating the façade as the aesthetic part. For him, getting the grandmother closer to the front door and making her eyes light up as she saw the kinetic façade were part of the same process.

Heatherwick is not an architect, but rather a designer with a wide range of expertise. His website says he is recognized for his work in:

• architecture
• sculpture
• urban infrastructure
• product design
• exhibition design
• strategic thinking

The New Yorker article: click here
DeZeen post with more pictures: click here
Wikipedia article on Thomas Heatherwick: click here

The website for Healtherwick Studios is www.heatherwick.com