Waikato Hospice, Wellness Centre, Stage Two, Hamilton.

In 2007, an existing hotel off Cobham Drive in Hamilton, was configured into a Stage One Campus Masterplan delivery for Waikato Hospice. That delivery of community based palliative care, provided specialist respite support for adults and children.

In 2013, Waikato District Healthcare partnered with Waikato Hospice, to extend the increased and successful delivery of specialist palliative care across the Waikato region. Waikato Hospice required a centralised administration hub for these increased services, providing regional clinical support services together with extended visitor and staff carparking facilities. Additional regional service spaces, client and visitor counselling, patient massage, craft and related support and service activities, were all merged into a new three level building development, configured between the existing Rainbow Place (Children’s Services) and the previously reconfigured Hotel/Administration Centre.

The new building massing required an architectural composition that created a transition between the two existing building blocks and their related internal activities of Outpatient and Children Care. Further, level changes from north to south and from east to west, challenged the internal and external space configuration assembly. A prominent arrival and drop off carparking zone subtly greets the visitor, and provides adjacent reception/waiting, meeting and counselling spaces, each space delivered with generous proportions of natural light, volume and views. Configured over two levels, the transparency of the north and south facades, allows for visitors and staff to connect to adjacent north parkland and distant rural vistas out to the south.

The finished result allows staff and visitor spaces to be treated with a collection of calming exterior landscaped and interior activity spaces, each filled with natural light, subtle texture and colour, and all collected together into an urban park campus.

Images Craig Brown Photography

Waikato Times, 19 March, 2014; https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/9842159/Demand-for-hospice-speeds-up-redevelopment-plans

Waikato Times, 03 September, 2015; https://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/71678733/generous-bequest-helps-hospice-waikato-open-an-extension