The Catkin Centre and Sunflower House, Liverpool

2025 RIBA North West Award
2025 RIBA North West Client of the Year sponsored by Equitone

Health
Cullinan Studio with 10architect for Alder Hey NHS Foundation Trust
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 3,073m²

Conceived as the latest stage in the carefully designed masterplan for the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital site, this project by Cullinan Studio tackles a challenging client brief for a complex building type with confidence and flair. Sitting as the latest specialist pavilion strung along the main pedestrian axis of the hospital campus, the Catkin Centre is visually connected to the large park landscape to the west yet only a minute’s walk from the main hospital building. 

Designed to accommodate children requiring specialist physical and mental health treatment as inpatients, the building avoids the traditional clinical appearance of NHS environments. The project is infused with humanity and care in its design, enabling its users, staff and patients to work in new and creative ways.

Both of its two parts – Catkin Centre to the west, and Sunflower House to the east – are elevated above a lower-ground car park and accessed across a wide bridge from the park landscape. The Catkin Centre is focused on a central atrium with a distinctive timber lightwell, while Sunflower House reverses the spatial relationship to create a central garden surrounded by a ‘cloister’ circulation space. 

In the atrium and cloister, small details respond to human needs, such as all windowsills being of a depth and set at a height that make them usable as informal seating areas. Windows in bedroom and treatment rooms are openable and set in projecting bays with angled views towards the park. These bays create more intimate zones within bedrooms, with lower ceiling heights and window seats.

The jury was impressed by the careful way these opportunities had been taken to step away from the clinical norms of hospital design. The selection of solid cross-laminated timber (CLT) panels for corridor walls add character – a robust, hardwearing finish, but one that softens these light-filled spaces. 

The building was filled with not only light but also views to landscapes, either in the form of the courtyard garden or the campus parkland. Externally, weathering steel cladding provides a contrast to the greenery surrounding the building and the timber within.

It is hard to overestimate the challenging nature of the project brief, or indeed the amazing work the staff and users of the building undertake. Those the jury met were full of praise for the way this project enhances the possibilities for a therapeutic environment.

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RIBA UK Awards 2025 sponsored by Autodesk, EH Smith, Equitone and VELUX