Eric Parry Architects has announced the approval of a £750m ($1bn) development at Warneford Park in Oxford, UK, which will establish a new mental health hospital and medical research centre alongside the conversion of listed buildings into a postgraduate college.
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, the University of Oxford and an anonymous local donor are partnering on the project, which received a resolution to grant planning consent on 21 April.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The project, designed by Eric Parry Architects, will involve the construction of more than 60,000m² of new facilities, which will accommodate the university’s Department of Psychiatry as well as clinical care and interdisciplinary science functions.
The scheme proposes to transfer current patients and staff from the historic Grade II-listed buildings on the site in Headington into new healthcare facilities once construction is complete.
These listed structures, dating back 200 years, will then undergo conversion into a graduate college intended to support students in medical sciences, bioengineering and related fields.
The planned postgraduate college facilities will include accommodation for 250 students with en-suite rooms, along with teaching areas, meeting spaces, academic offices, performance and rehearsal rooms, a dining hall, library and informal study zones.
Donald Insall Associates is advising on the renovation of the listed buildings, while Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is overseeing landscape architecture for the grounds, which are set to include ornamental gardens, rain gardens and productive spaces intended for patient use.
Sustainability features in the design will draw on Passivhaus principles and meet NHS Net Zero Carbon standards.
The new hospital buildings will use materials such as unglazed terracotta, stone, precast concrete, and timber to help the new structures blend with the surrounding historic buildings.
The timeline for further construction phases will depend on future funding arrangements.
Eric Parry Architects director Robert Dawson said: “Our landscape-led approach to the proposals will create new patient accommodation in buildings designed to support contemporary clinical care and well-being.
“Collocated with multi-discipline research space, housing the University of Oxford Psychiatry Department, with other academic disciplines and commercial start-ups and pharma companies, we will also safeguard the future of the Grade II listed buildings by converting them for use as a new University of Oxford graduate college.
“These individual elements will transform the site to a campus of clinicians, researchers, and academic students translating life science discoveries into new treatments.”
Warneford Hospital’s operations will continue during the build, with transitions to follow once the new campus is complete.
