Moorfields Eye Hospital - Richard Desmond Children's Eye Centre (RDCEC)
ProCure21 project shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award.
At over 200 years old, Moorfields Hospital is one of the world’s oldest and largest centres for
ophthalmic treatment, teaching and research. Her Majesty The Queen officially opened the
Richard Desmond Children’s Eye Centre (RDCEC) on 23 February 2007.
This world-class treatment centre for childrens eye conditions brings together the medical expertise of Moorfields Eye Hospital and the research base of the Institute of Ophthalmology. It provides a dedicated centre with outpatient clinics, day surgery, research facilities and a short stay hostel for patients? families. Clinics are arranged above the welcoming reception with a shop and a cafe enjoying views south into a pocket park.
The eight storey solar shading facade is composed of shimmering free form louvres with a bay for outpatients waiting area projecting out at the third floor.The constricted nature of the site, the internal layout of clinics and the necessary connections to the existing first floor operating theatres and the research floor of the Institute on the second, all contributed to a clear vertical arrangement of spaces within an eight-storey building.
Externally the mass of the building is lifted clear above a largely glazed entrance platform containing a cafe, shops and, deeper into the building, the arrival and pre-op areas for the surgical patients and relatives. Bridges cross a slot of space running up the building separating the lifts and stairs, acting as a pause prior to entering the clinical areas and introducing a sense of space and scale. Waiting areas have play pods, one of which bursts through the floor above, making a table there.
The south facade, facing onto the open space across Peerless Street, is protected from solar gain through an arrangement of freely placed folded aluminium louvres, held within a large frame enfolding the facade, on a tensioned cable net suspended in front of glass curtain walling. A projecting bay breaks through the net signalling the most populated part of the building - the main outpatient waiting area on the third floor.
The ceramic element of the facade is cleverly interupted by a series of eyes with Red and Yellow Eyes seen above. This was not a problem for the Aliva Ceramic Backing Structure which easily accomodated these protrusions into the backing structure zone.
Designed by Penoyre and Prasad Architects a local practice 5 minutes walk from the site www.penoyre-prasad.net
Aliva UK supplied 400sqm of Aliva Ceramic backing structure behind this Ceramic Tile Facade. The dimensions of the building were such that a standard 1200x600mm tile would not coordinate in every area, which necessitated that many tiles were trimmed in the factory to a much smaller module. The Aliva Ceramic backing structure accommodated the new sizes with ease and it is in fact flexible enough to work with almost any size tile.
Pluswall Ltd installed the facade and were very pleased with the flexibility of the Aliva Ceramic backing structure which they had used on many occasions.
Aliva Ceramic Backing Structure has built in tolerance to work within the building tolerances and allow a perpendicular facade no matter how imprecise the building structure is behind. L Shaped brackets are supplied from 40 to 260mm as standard in increments of 20mm, so almost any cladding zone can be achieved. Most brackets have a tolerance of +/- 20mm as standard when used with our 60x40x2.2mm L profile.
Our 6m horizontal rail is supplied pre slotted in the factory to allow for expansion and movement on site, meaning that site operatives don’t need to cut the rail down in length, nor create their own slots on site. The rail can be supplied in mill finish aluminium or black finish as depending on joint size and tile colour you may or may not see the rail through the open 8mm joints.
Choosing an 8mm horizontal joint allows tiles to be replaced should there be the need.
Typically 4 undercut anchors are used per tile, Aliva provides the Kiel anchors to fit into these predrilled factory undercut holes. The anchors are secured to one of 2 different clamps, an adjustable or a fixed clamp. Adjustable clamps on the upper horizontal rail allow +/- 5mm vertical adjustment in the tile. On either side of one of the adjustable clamps blocks are installed to prevent the tile moving along the rail.
The hospital are delighted with the appearance of the facade, the Aliva Ceramic backing structure does an excellent job in aligning all the tiles and giving a clean crisp facade.
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