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Architects: Woods Bagot
- Area: 2200 m²
- Year: 2013
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Photographs:Peter Bennetts
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Manufacturers: Austimber
Text description provided by the architects. Woods Bagot has designed the Woy Woy Rehabilitation Unit, co-located and integrated with the Woy Woy Hospital situated on the Central Coast of New South Wales.
A new insertion into the existing health services complex, the rehabilitation unit is an extension to the hospital’s clinical program and accommodates patients requiring interdisciplinary restorative care following a range of injuries, surgery or illness.
“Homes in the park” was a central theme in the design. The intention was to create a healing environment through the provision of generous solar access and landscaped, therapeutic outdoor courtyards. Towards the back of the facility, the scale of the building is broken down to a series of pavilion-like buildings on a residential scale.
The landscape design intends to fuse the architecture of the unit with a landscape that complements the existing environs with visual connections integrating interior and external spaces of the unit.
The design breaks from conventional institutional architecture by providing protective interior spaces and creating a sanctuary to nurture patients through the healing process. Sitting within a parkscape environment, the new unit simultaneously plugs into the existing facility and creates its own architectural gesture.
Bringing the idea of “the garden” into the scheme, the patients’ spatial journey is extended into the existing groves of eucalypts and native grasses surrounding the site. Landscaped, tranquil courtyards that change with the passage of time have been inserted into the core of the space, framing green spaces and enabling ideas of growth and regeneration to become visibly tangible.
Featuring an origami- inspired, triangulated roof at the entrance and distinctive use of brick and timber details throughout, the design helps to create a residential feel for the exteriors.
The roof brings light into the scheme, encouraging solar access to reach internal corridors, while the colour of the bricks, shifting from deep blue to grey and dark brown, is inspired by the Aboriginal meaning of Woy Woy: “Wy Wy” is said to mean "much water" or "big lagoon’.
In addition to the 30-bed rehabilitation unit, the project scope included an upgrade of the back of house hospital services and creation of a new car park to service the rehabilitation unit.
