Description:

Beneath Ngā Puna Waiora, Wellington Regional Hospital water springs used to bubble their life-giving and now whispers of the vibrant and peaceful green that used to cover the landscape. Te Wao Nui, Wellington’s new Children's Hospital, design is inspired by ‘The Great Forest of Tāne’. The forest is reflected through images, motifs and biophilic influence that aims to bring the healing qualities of nature into the space.

The research established a practical and atmospheric spatial healing criteria framework, critiquing current hospital design standards and investigating how space influences patients, whānau and staff's emotional, psychological and social well-being. This framework identified spatial qualities that support healing conditions to enhance comfort, autonomy, security, quality of care and life, reduce stress and pain, ease anxiety, and provide a sense of well-being. Mapping these criteria within Te Wao Nui and test design interventions began to demonstrate the different layers of healing design can add. The impactful changes prompted questions of how drastically hospital design can and should change to become healing and support its users.

To imagine what might be possible if the narrative layer of Te Wao Nui holistically shapes the architecture, Whenua Whakaora proposes a speculative alternative to the new Wellington’s Children Hospital design. This reimagining of the hospital as Whenua Whakaora reframes the narrative layer as a more transformative and fundamental concept of hospital-as-landscape. And brings the context of Ngā Puna Waiora and Te Wao Nui to life in creating a healing environment through the design.

This speculative alternative is an experiment that seeks to challenge the way we engage with designing hospitals and pushing the boundaries of what carefully designed healing architecture can do for well-being, critically reimagining the potential of hospitals through permeability and their urban potential. Natural light, trees and fresh air penetrate the centre of Whenua Whakaora, and with the movement and flow of staff, patients and whānua are mindfully at the forefront of the layout. Playfulness and homelike comfort are interwoven through Whenua Whakaora softens every space with materials, privacy, and accessibility that soothes and supports.

Whenua Whakaora questions the quality of space in the hospital and its ability to care and nurture, rethinking the importance of functional and enchanting spatial qualities that support well-being.