Nature and views are part of the hospice programme

KKE’s new St David’s Hospice Care In-Patient Unit in Newport, Wales, has won a slew of awards, including the RSAW Client of the Year, and this year’s MacEwen judges felt it deserved a place here too.

The new unit, KKE's second building for St David’s, provides 15 en-suite bedrooms supported by communal spaces, a day room, clinical offices, bathrooms and café. Set out in an L-shape on the top of a mound over the town in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons, it is designed to provide optimum views from the patients' bedrooms over a large landscaped garden. A battered dry-stone gabion retaining wall creates a ground level close to the building and enables level access directly from both the day room and bedrooms so patients can be taken out to enjoy the fresh air.

Inclusive design is at the heart of the hospice’s brief. Accessibility is a priority as it affects the dignity of patients, a central focus of the hospice’s work, and is the reason why most of the building is at ground level. The newly landscaped surrounding area consists of a wild flower meadow planted with native trees that provides a tranquil, ecologically enhanced environment accessible for patients, carers, visitors, staff and volunteers alike.

Judge Yuli Cadney-Toh particularly enjoyed the way KKE had created a non-institutional feel to the interior in a highly hygienic healthcare setting.

See more of the MacEwen here