Check Me In!

The Gandel Wing at Cabrini Malvern, Melbourne by Bates Smart

Words Photography

The New Clinical Building by Bates Smart in Malvern is anything but clinical. The seven-storey building (with an additional four levels below ground) could be mistaken for residential apartments with its timber-battened façade. Forming the new building is the Gandel Wing at Cabrini Malvern, responding as much to the latest changes in technology as it does to the surrounding leafy neighbourhood and its demographics. “We’ve been working on this hospital campus since the 1980s. This time, it was about strengthening connections to our previous centres (Medical Centres Two and Three) as well creating this new wing, including the provision of over 100 new beds,” says Mark Healey, studio director at Bates Smart.

Replacing a two-storey concrete consulting wing from the 1980s, the new wing will accommodate patients in the specialty areas of radiotherapy, cancer, cardiac, maternity, emergency, geriatric care and infectious diseases and importantly, will provide valuable new pathways that allow other areas within the hospital campus to benefit. “We wanted to use the ‘DNA’ of the other two centres we designed at Cabrini Malvern to feel integral to this latest development: streamlined, contemporary and uncluttered,” says Healey, who was mindful of the demographics in the immediate and broader environment he and his team were working with, reportedly one of the oldest cohorts in Melbourne (City of Stonnington). “We also wanted our design to better connect to nature,” says Healey, who included large floor-to-ceiling picture windows at the end of passages to allow people a sense of the outdoors from within. “It’s also a way of orientating people as they move through the building,” he adds.

From the moment patients and visitors arrive via Isabella

Street, into a courtyard-style garden entrance, there’s a sense of both clarity and softness, eschewing any hard rectilinear lines. Lights are thoughtfully placed below handrails along with ceiling lighting that creates a softer environment than what’s normally experienced. “We reduced the lighting to 3000K (the usual is 4000) to create a more calming ambience,” says Healey, who also included soft rounded corners on all levels. The oak timber laminate used for