Alistair Fair

Resilience of ‘Nightingale’ hospital wards in a changing climate:

The National Health Service (NHS) Estate in England comprises more than 30 Mm2 with 18.83 Mm2 of acute hospital accommodation on 330 sites. There is concern about the resilience of these buildings in a changing climate, informed by the experience of recent heatwaves. However, the widespread installation of air conditioning would disrupt the achievement of ambitious energy reduction targets. The research project ‘Design and Delivery of Robust Hospital Environments in a Changing Climate’ is attempting to estimate the resilience of the NHS Estate on the basis of current and projected performance, using an adaptive comfort model. This paper presents results relating to a 1920s traditionally built block with open ‘Nightingale’ wards, a representative type. The paper demonstrates the relative resilience of the type, and illustrates a series of light-touch measures that may increase resilience while saving energy. Practical application: The results presented in this paper will be of value to NHS Trusts: Estates staff charged with operating buildings as well as Boards and others involved in decision-making. It will also find an audience with policymakers in central government and the Department of Health, as well as those who own, operate or are tasked with working on non-domestic buildings with heavy traditional construction.

'Brutalism Among the Ladies': Modern Architecture at Somerville College, Oxford, 1947-67

In 1945, Janet Vaughan, a distinguished haematologist, became Principal of Somerville College, Oxford, her Principalship lasting until her retirement in 1967. Described in her obituary as ‘a woman of extraordinary vitality and not a little impatience’, Vaughan — awarded the DBE in 1957 — played a key role in steering the college through a period of major change in British Higher Education. Not least amongst the changes was a significant growth in the number of students at university across the country, which resulted in numerous, often high-profile, construction projects. Somerville, which had been founded in 1879 as the University of Oxfords second college for women, was not untouched by this development, and at Vaughans retirement party, her colleague, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dorothy Hodgkin, referred to the several new buildings completed during the previous two decades. The colleges post-war building campaign had begun modestly with two small infill developments by Geddes Hyslop in 1948–50 and 1954–56.