The new Royal Liverpool University Hospital – Liverpool – November 2016

[mockney reject]

The History

It has been called the “ugliest building in Liverpool”: a towering brutalist slab with near-permanent scaffolding in a sea of parking, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital has long needed a facelift.

“If you think of Liverpool 100 years ago,” says David Lewis from the project’s architects NBBJ, “you had the docks, and all these public and civic buildings. To the west, there was the university and beautiful residential squares. But when building the hospital, they took an urban block which had streets, schools and churches – and they flattened it to put in a 1970s hospital slab. It was detrimental to the city.”

Now, however, after more than a decade of delays, work has finally started on an ambitious £335m redevelopment of Merseyside’s largest hospital. And the ambition is not simply to tackle a building that has outstayed its usefulness; it is to make the whole city healthier and wealthier too.

The design is underpinned by the idea that nature and natural light will aid the healing process for patients, creating a hospital that is calmer and more pleasant for the city’s residents as well as its staff and patients.

The Explore

While up in Liverpool to check out the waste of time that was Alderhay, myself and @slayaaaa decide to find something high and interesting. Well here what we found

The new hospital covered in scaffolding appealed to us and up we went.

Entry wasn’t too bad and the building itself was typical of a tower block with identical floors. Some floors where more equipped than others but with nothing real juicy in them to look at yet.

However we did find a map that pointed us towards a tunnel to the morgue. All excited we followed this map and after a bit realised that the tunnel we were in actually lead to the existing morgue, so promptly scraped that idea.

We ended up chilling on the roof for a bit while there and had a relaxing evening.

Enjoy the pics

 

[Sam Haltin]

Roof shots are nice. The ones with clouds and smoke are my favourites. Not a very impressive looking hospital, I've seen better, derelict and non-derelict.

 

[Dirus_Strictus]

Very nice set of images. The night time city scape is somewhat different to the mid November 1965 version I saw from the roof of the Royal Insurance. Very dark and murky back then, even though the City was heaving! I do find David Lewis's rather lyrical musings about inner city living 100 years ago, somewhat disturbing! Inner city living back then was in decaying slums, situated on disease riddled streets that could be full of raw sewage at times. Yes if you had money; one did live around the gardened city square, a tram or carriage ride away from the stench and grime of the inner city. However; if you were the family of a Docker who had to fight to retrieve his daily work token, the roof over your head consisted of a single crowded roof in a decaying tenement slum. The sad thing about the Liverpool slum clearances (and those in other cities also) was the high-rise flats that replaced the tenements. These tended to promote a feeling of isolation and the whole dynamic of the 'friendly street banter' was lost. It's all very well having ones own washing machine in the kitchen, but talking to the budgie or cat was no substitute to the chatter in the communal wash houses! Who'd have thought back then, that it would all end up with everybody having an I-phone glued in their ear!