Trevor Morriss, principal at SPPARC, discusses its “heritage-led” adaptive reuse of Modernist icon Ravenscourt Park Hospital into new London housing; and what architects can learn from its guiding principles of fresh air and sunlight, a century on.
Despite its key role in popularising the Modernist movement in Britain, Ravenscourt Park Hospital in London’s Hammersmith has sat empty for 20 years and now appears on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register. Following planning consent for developer TT Group last July, SPPARC’s heritage-led repositioning of the former hospital into 140 residential units and a 65-bed care home will ensure the survival of its architecturally significant Grade II* listed buildings. It will also open the site up to the public for the first time through dedicated community spaces, new pedestrian routes linking to Ravenscourt Park, and a landscaping scheme that reflects the importance of open space in the original design vision.
As its original name suggests, the Royal Masonic Hospital was commissioned by the Freemasons, to provide low-cost healthcare to its members and their families. For the hospital’s architects (Burnet, Tait & Lorne), it represented a major shift in style for their practice. Despite winning the project in 1929 based on Neo-Georgian proposals, lead architect Thomas S. Tait would later radically redesign his plans in the International Modernist style. With its flat roofs, horizontal lines and sparse ornamentation, the hospital’s layout and aesthetic exemplified this emerging movement. The campus of four red-brick buildings – three hospital blocks and one entrance building, are joined by glass bridges in a cross-axial layout.
For SPPARC, a practice that has built up a portfolio of major projects and a reputation for reworking some of London’s most significant heritage buildings, it is always a pleasure to work alongside the design ingenuity of historic architecture.
On its opening in 1933, praise for the Royal Masonic Hospital was near unanimous. It won both RIBA’s Gold Medal for Building of the Year in 1933 and the London Architecture Bronze Medal in 1934. A two-page spread in Country Life described the hospital as ‘one of the most successful… contemporary buildings in the country’, while Architects’ Journal hailed it as the architectural event of the year.
This widespread acclaim was about more than just aesthetics, however. Hospitals embody prevailing beliefs about healthcare from the time in which they were built. Before they shifted to a focus on minimising costs and maximising efficiencies, hospital layouts reflected an understanding that the basic principles of plentiful sunlight and fresh air are fundamental to good health.
As an example of this design philosophy, the hospital’s largest ward block, Block B, is oriented south to maximise the amount of light entering the wards, with its U-shaped layout overlooking a communal garden. Perhaps the most iconic feature of the hospital’s Modernist style, the semi-circular sun balconies on Block B’s private wards also reflect these principles. Made possible by the work of Swedish engineer Sven Bylander, the balconies cantilever with the limited support of three thin piers, representing a major innovation in welding and thin concrete design for the time. These provided patients with access to fresh air, while their glass tiles allowed natural light to penetrate all levels.
A testament to the quality of its design, the hospital would go on to enjoy over 60 years in operation, remaining self-funded even after the National Health Service was established in 1948. Financial difficulties would eventually lead to its closure in 1994, re-opening as an NHS Diagnostic and Treatment Centre in 2002, before shutting its doors for good just four years later.
With no further identified need for a hospital on the site, SPPARC’s sensitive conversion into residential use and a care home will meet local needs and targets while continuing its historic use by the healthcare sector. An extensive public consultation process revealed enthusiasm for these new uses along with support from both Historic England and the 20th Century Society.
In many ways, Ravenscourt Park Hospital represents one of London’s largest ongoing heritage restoration projects. After two decades of vacancy, the former hospital has, unsurprisingly, fallen into disrepair. The project will clean up the buildings’ heritage exteriors, with sensitively crafted interventions and additions of varying scale. Landscaping works will restore the original ornamental water feature, built-in planters, garden walls, gates, lighting, and clock.
While some of SPPARC’s heritage work elsewhere requires relatively more intervention due to these buildings’ original uses – like the transformation of Olympia’s Grade II listed former multi-storey car park into a school and 5-star hotel – Ravenscourt Park Hospital’s plan form lends itself well to residential conversion. As an emphasis on wellbeing rises to the fore of housing design, there is much that modern architects can learn from the hospital’s deliberately generous open space and wall-to-window ratios.
Blocks B to D, the former hospital’s operational core, will be turned into spacious new housing from one-bedroom apartments to family offerings. Internally, existing floor levels and cores will be maintained, remodelling these where needed to meet modern space standards, fire safety requirements and inclusive design principles. In many cases, SPPARC was able to come up with innovative ways to subtly incorporate the original plan form into the new use, for example, by repurposing the nurses’ rooms as dining rooms and living spaces. Overall, significant historic fabric will be retained to maintain the legibility of the original design and former use.
Block B’s iconic sun decks will also be retained for residential use as extraordinary private balconies. Even where some heritage features cannot be retained in situ, SPPARC has sought to relocate them to another part of the site. This includes moving the original ceramic tiles from the former children’s wing on Block B to the entrance at Block A.
Ravenscourt Park Hospital is, in my view, too architecturally significant to remain hidden away from the public any longer. New public spaces and routes have been carefully designed to ensure the site’s permeability without compromising the privacy of residents. The former entrance block, Block A, will house flexible spaces for hire for classes, talks, events, and other similar uses. Thankfully, most of its heritage features remain surprisingly intact to this day, including some of the interwar period’s most lavish interiors and two Greek-style Gilbert Bayes sculptures flanking each side of the entrance that, in a nod to its hospital use, represent Healing and Charity – all of which will be carefully restored under SPPARC’s supervision.
At SPPARC, our approach to heritage – from Olympia to the Saville Theatre – is grounded in a belief that modern additions should not copy their host architecture, but instead be worthy of it. Tait’s masterplan for the hospital originally envisaged another ward block to mirror Block A. Though the site’s boundaries do not allow us to replicate this vision exactly, SPPARC’s designs for a new Block E and F are in the spirit of that original masterplan. Housing further residential units and the care home, respectively, the new buildings adopt a strong masonry palette that reflects on the listed buildings, without seeking to imitate them. These will replace a low-quality 1970s addition to the site that blocked off access from Ravenscourt Square to the west, with the new Blocks E and F sharing the Modernist era’s ambition of unadorned surfaces celebrated through well considered detail and a carefully planned layout.
Across the site, we are implementing an all electric energy strategy that includes the installation of ground-source heat pumps, the most sensitive approach for the listed buildings that maintain a clear roof.
Rather than working against the heritage onsite, SPPARC’s revival of Ravenscourt Park Hospital celebrates the design principles that informed the hospital’s layout in the first place. Though nearly a century since it was first constructed, its focus on the basic principles of air, sunlight and access to the outdoors has a timeless quality that architects would do well to draw on today.
Trevor Morriss is principal at SPPARC