Comment How architecture helps in times of greatest need
and terra cotta of the hospital, the new building has white rendered walls, lots of unpainted timber, and a green sedum roof. It looks friendly.
Inside it is indeed more like a house than a part of a hospital: domestic-scaled rooms, a sociable family room, comfortable and informal furniture and clerestorey windows admitting views of the sky and clouds.
Windows and glazed doors connect the rooms to the Matron’s Garden outside, but the building is planned around its own internal courtyard, which offers more privacy for its occupants.
The plan is irregular and feels organic. It is not governed exclusively by right angles, and the spaces, both inside and outside, fit together comfortably.
Of course I have not seen it in use, but I imagine that its users will not feel constrained by the formal conventions of hospital waiting rooms or interview rooms, but will be able to occupy the spaces in a way that feels more natural and personal to them. There is an inherent flexibility in the plan.
Magnolia House was designed by Birmingham architects Pinnegar Hayward Design, based in the Jewellery Quarter, who have a track record of a number of healthcare buildings.
Director Simon Wills described to me how, because the building was a novel project for the NHS Trust that includes the hospital, it enterprisingly involved parents in design workshops at every stage with the architects, discussing what kind of place they wanted Magnolia House to be.
It is perhaps too soon to say how close the result is to what they envisaged but, unusually, the design and operation of Magnolia House is going to be the subject of postoccupation analysis, carried out by Dr Karen Shaw, a research psychologist at the University of Birmingham.
Dr Shaw specialises in working with children with life-threatening illness. This kind of post-occupation study is what every innovative building should undergo, but there is rarely any funding to pay for it to be done.
On many occasions in Magnolia House, parents will be informed that their child is going to die.
Despite the excellent work done at the hospital, recently rated “outstanding” by the Care Quality Commission, many patients’ stay there ends in death.
Receiving bad news can induce extreme reactions: sorrow, shock, anger, even the urge to flee. It is the job of the architecture to assist the staff and the families to cope with these reactions – not to deny them but to accommodate them.
I do not want to exaggerate the ability of architecture to help people experiencing trauma.
Architecture is a physical context for experience, not the experience itself but, put simply, while architecture cannot make a painful experience other than painful, bad architecture can certainly make it worse. Good and thoughtful architecture can at least offer some opportunity for consolation, some passive support to add to that given by the staff, a reminder that beyond individual narratives, life continues.
Support in the face of death is the raison d’etre of Magnolia House, and the architecture, though modest, is life-affirming.
It is light-filled and peaceful. It encloses, and creates security where appropriate, but at the same time it connects to the world outside.
Nicki Fitzmaurice points out that its special environment extends even to its smell: Magnolia House smells different from the rest of the hospital.
It is an interesting commentary on its success in making a special place within the hospital that Nicki reports that she is getting requests to book space in Magnolia House from her colleagues elsewhere in the hospital, going beyond its intended purpose. It is a place where people would like to spend some of their time.
It is early days in the life of Magnolia House. But as every day we hear of crisis in the NHS, this small initiative is a significant piece of good news. Joe Holyoak ia a Birminghambased architect and urban
designer
While architecture cannot make a painful experience other than painful, bad architecture can certainly make it worse