What sets the new Mater Mothers’ Hospitals apart?

What we did early was, we really wanted to understand what the theme or feeling of this building should be about. So we went and talked to patients and visitors and staff about their thoughts on what it should mean to them. And one of the really interesting messages came to us was this is a building of wellness and not sickness, and it was very strong in the way the architects and other people looked at it. That childbirth, for the majority of people, is a very natural process and that this wasn’t about building a hospital this was about building a place where you came and had a baby.

We’ve done some major public art, and also the standard wall art, but it’s all original and the other emerging trend we decided was that we would try to pick local or Australian artists, but more importantly, emerging artists. So we’ve really tried to give young artists an opportunity. The research says that if you make an environment that’s calm and relaxing, that is appealing, you can change staff attitudes, make them feel better, and in fact the research shows that patients can reduce their length of stay, reduce their anxiety, become less stressed and even take less medications. The beauty of what we’ve done here is that we’ve involved a clinical team with a design and a building team. We think we’ve actually come up with a really good solution for the future, for what we believe, and will continue to be Australia’s busiest maternity hospital.

How have you addressed environmental issues in the new building?

We’ve designed significant sun shading to the building, with detailed sun studies to try and reduce heat loads into the building. Water harvesting is a major feature of this building, and we are harvesting all our rainwater from the building with the idea that it will give us enough water to flush our toilets and run our basic water systems—not drinking systems—for at least three days continuous if we were not able to access town water. Energy efficient lighting has been a major request as well in the project, so we’ve tried to select those products to reduce that, and we’ve tried to select other materials in the building that are less harsh on the environment.

What challenges do you face moving to the new premises?

Patients will have breakfast in the existing Mothers’ and we believe everyone will be bedded down and having dinner in the new building that night.

The interesting thing though is we can’t actually downsize planned activities in the hospital, we actually have to assume that we’ll be running full bore in our nurseries and delivery suites, while we move to the new building. And that’s been the major critical planning around that.

What other building projects have been underway in 2007?

We talk about the new Mater Mothers’, but we’ve actually been renovating a major part of the Adult Hospital as well, which is right next door. At any one time, we will have been building in six or seven locations at once. We’re now down to two locations, and we’re slowly starting to come out of the building and to start leaving the Adult Hospital staff alone.