Designed by a multidisciplinary team from BDP and built by Laing O’ Rourke, the new Louisa Martindale Building will serve as the region’s main trauma centre. It’s expected that more than 100,000 patients a year will be treated across 13 floors in the hospital’s purpose-designed environments. Additional clinical and support accommodation facilities add to the modern, enhanced setting, both for staff and patients requiring hospital care from across Sussex. 

The building also provides major new facilities for multiple wards and departments, new diagnostic and theatre capacity, as well as increased capacity for units with high demand, including neurosciences, stroke services and intensive care. The imaging department is also housed in the building and is already benefitting from new scanning equipment, including MRIs and CT scanners.

BDP’s design is described as placing a large-scale hospital building sensitively into its historic context, on a constrained site. The topography of the site is fully exploited with the mass of the building broken down into fingers, which contain the bulk of the ward accommodation. All patient rooms face south with views over the English Channel, increasing a connection with the outdoors and the calming scenes of the sea.

As part of the project, BDP delivered services in architecture; environmental engineering; interior design; landscape architecture; and town planning.

Enzo Guddemi, architect director at BDP, said: “The Louisa Martindale building is designed to deliver a reassuring, calming atmosphere for patients and staff to support and enhance the amazing care provided by the Trust.”

He continued: “The light, open and airy feel and the views across the channel bring a new dimension to those who may be experiencing some of life’s most stressful moments. It’s all designed to be legible and navigable, and we know this is an exciting point in time for everyone connected to this project. We’re sure it will only support the Trust’s ongoing ambition to deliver new buildings, which showcase the future of NHS facilities, today.”

Gavin Body, Laing O’Rourke project leader, said: “The project has been one with complex challenges, which have included delivering the new facilities while allowing the existing hospital to keep services running throughout. I’m tremendously proud of our team. They maintained focus throughout the pandemic and beyond to deliver a hospital that will serve the people of Sussex for generations to come.”

Throughout the project, BDP was involved in detailed negotiations with the local planning authority and Historic England to ensure the most suitable design for a town centre hospital. The town planning team led extensive negotiations with the local authority on complex planning conditions and it continues to consult on behalf of University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust as regard to stages two and three of the 3Ts project.

Stage two of the redevelopment is now underway to create a new Sussex Cancer Centre and emergency department, replacing the oldest acute ward building in the NHS, the Barry Building, which opened in 1828.