Lady Cilento Children's Hospital
2016 National Award of Excellence - Civic
2015 Queensland Award of Excellence - Civic
Conrad Gargett
The Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital project, in inner city Brisbane, has taken landscape architecture beyond the conventional two-dimensional realm and showed that design innovation can lead to tangible benefits to health and wellbeing. The rooftop subtropical landscapes, community spaces and vertical gardens are clear evidence of effective design collaboration between project partners on what was a complex and challenging site.
The design capitalizes on and creates clever relationships within its urban location, and provides for public amenity at a variety of scales. The new civic space on Vulture Street is a significant addition to the public environment of South Bank and demonstrates the importance of engaging with the existing urban context irrespective of the building project’s scale.
The micro landscapes in and around the hospital provide an accessible form of relief and escape for seriously ill and infirm patients and have demonstrative benefits in sustainability and building efficiency. The landscape designs are bold, progressive and conversant with the language of Lyons’ building facades. The series of garden rooms offer parents and children places that inspire curiosity and play as well as a reprieve from hospital visits. Green walls and green roofs become wonderlands as well as lush, verdant vistas from hospital beds.
The project makes a major contribution to the advancement of green infrastructure landscape design practice at a national level.
