With placemaking at its heart, King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park in Belfast, Northern Ireland sets a benchmark for community-integrated health and social care. Todd Architects has been working with healthcare developer Benmore Octopus on the design of the masterplan to regenerate the King’s Hall site as part of a dynamic residential, lifestyle, leisure and wellbeing park.

Alongside a range of primary healthcare services, life sciences and early-years learning, the King’s Hall site has senior residential and nursing care, as well as assisted living spaces providing transitional and specialist care. All of this is set amid a thriving, multi-generational environment of eateries, retail and leisure facilities, and sited close to an established community.

The park improves access to healthcare services for patients, provides much-needed quality retirement living, and acts as a hub for life sciences companies in the south of the city. It will also help protect and preserve the iconic King’s Hall building, which once played host to music acts such as the Beatles and U2 and was the setting for boxer Barry McGuigan’s first title defence in 1985.

The masterplan

King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park is located 3.5 miles from Belfast city centre in South Belfast, on the site of the former King’s Hall and Balmoral Showgrounds. The immediate area is mixed in character and includes high-quality residential and retail/restaurants located close by on the Lisburn Road.

The masterplan for the park was developed in close collaboration with the developer and Belfast City Council, extensively engaging with various healthcare stakeholders and the local community.

Key components of the masterplan are:

The King’s Hall (Plot 1)

The King’s Hall, built in 1933 as a permanent exhibition hall for the Royal Ulster Agricultural Society, is a listed building and a well-known landmark both locally and regionally. The wider redevelopment not only advanced various new components within the site but also supported the renovation and adaptive reuse of this heritage asset for the planned provision of primary care and support facilities over a number of levels within the existing building.

The new accommodation is conceptually treated as ‘insertions’ within the large open volume. To experience the original scale of the building, the added services are provided in new elements along each side of a tall, open central space. Practices are accessed via a new feature stair and lift core, with views into the central atrium. The ground floor is conceived as an extension of the new plaza, with medical support services such as pharmacy and opticians envisaged.

The building features active uses addressing both the external street and proposed internal mall, continuing the theme of a place for interaction for both the campus residents and the visiting community.

Dataworks – extension to the King’s Hall: (Plot 2)

Subservient in scale to the listed King’s Hall building, the extension is two storeys in height with an additional plant level above. The building has been designed with the potential for ground-floor linkage into the main King’s Hall and future flexibility.

The plan is simple and served off a central entrance core, which accommodates a double-height entrance foyer, stairs, lifts, WCs and showers.

The building template was developed to maximise its use for several potential end-users and tenants. Proof of its success is that the building is now fully let with a range of associated medical uses, including a medical data analytics firm and private healthcare providing a range of services, from consultation to day procedures.

Residential with ground-floor local retail (Plot 3)

Located at the entrance to the campus, this block provides new residential accommodation and frames the new main entrance road and plaza. The scale has been carefully considered to ensure the building is respectfully lower in height than King’s Hall with generous separation distances between the two, to enhance the setting of the listed building.

This plot provides a range of tenures, with social and affordable accommodation for elderly residents. Active use is incorporated within the ground floor of the development, consciously adding to the vibrancy of the development.

Residential nursing home (Plot 4)

The four-storey nursing home was developed in close liaison with an experienced residential care home operator. The offer allows for care of the elderly in a safe, supported environment.

To create a series of differing external spaces, the building has been designed around landscaping, including sensitive secure gardens with active supervision. It’s located at a key point in the masterplan and frames views at the end of the plaza and at the end of the roadway serving the main residential portion of the site. The ground-floor uses to the plaza edge have been designed to allow communal and social interaction for visitors to the residential nursing home.

Independent later living (Plot 5)

Forming a transition to the established residential area, this plot is part of the homes for later living incorporated within the site.

Specifically designed for the over-55s, these generous apartments are arranged in groups of four units, served by a shared lift and stair core. Each unit is spacious, with a consideration of future adaptability to allow residents to ‘age in place’ as their requirements change with age.

Ample storage, cognisant of the needs of ‘downsizers’, has shaped the design and layout of these units. Every apartment has its own dedicated private external space, either directly off or adjacent to the unit.

Retirement living (Plot 6)

These units are located besides, and benefit from views of, the Balmoral Golf Club, which adjoins the site and forms part of the residential ‘edge’ to the long-established Harberton residential area.

Following on from the success of Plot 5, this development considers how later living can be designed with flexibility and adaptability incorporated from the outset. The building’s massing has several conscious ‘steps’ in the form, allowing for large private roof terraces and access to external spaces. As with the other plots, dedicated parking is provided within the site.

Simply Me Crèche (Plot 7)

This single-storey ‘Scandinavian style’ pre-school was located on the site prior to the development commencing. This use was accommodated within the evolving masterplan and integrated to bring another very different use to the site.

Co-located with retirement living and adjacent to Dataworks, this use enlivens the campus.

Multi-storey car park, retail, leisure, restaurant and cafe (Plot 8)

The multi-storey car park (six storeys) includes local retail, a cafe and restaurant, and leisure uses at ground-floor level, and fronting on to the central plaza space.

By incorporating this element in the masterplan, significant car parking capacity is provided, while it also limits the surface requirement for parking across the scheme, which has accordingly been given to landscaping.

Associated medical and health services (Plot 9)

Following on from the success of the extension to the King’s Hall, and the market demand from a range of healthcare providers in Dataworks, our client is currently at the early stages of development of this plot. However, the building elements range in scale, both in terms of floorplate and height/scale to allow the building to suit a wide range of potential occupiers.

Located adjacent to the listed King’s Hall, it’s designed to respectfully echo its scale, materials and detailing. The main entrances are located beside the northern gable of the King’s Hall, while a new ‘dwell’ space is also planned. The main portion of this accommodation faces onto and forms a built edge to the new central plaza space.

The masterplan for the King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park sets a benchmark for community-integrated health and social care, and suggests a fresh, healthcare-led approach to urban renewal. With placemaking at its heart, it’s been designed to encourage social connection, promote healthier lifestyles, and foster an entrepreneurial health community.

Encouraging social connection

The benefits of social connectivity for mental and physical wellbeing are well evidenced, with one landmark study from the University of Michigan showing that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Social connectedness is especially important for promoting health later in life, yet many traditional later living and care communities in the UK are often isolated in remote or rural locations. However, the senior demographic is rapidly changing and many older people now want to continue living in urban and suburban areas, close to amenities where they can maintain friendships and participate in community activities.

Our masterplan for the King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park outlines how later living and healthcare needs can be integrated into the local community with the ability to share or co-locate facilities, where practical. The King’s Hall scheme adopts a fully connected, interrelated urban context. It posits a new form of urbanism driven by health and wellbeing, planned and designed around social inclusion to create a development where all ages can live side by side, benefitting from the social, cultural and economic opportunities of a multi-generational diverse community.

A good example of the multi-generational diversity at King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park was the introduction of a kindergarten to the overall masterplan. While not originally envisaged to be part of the scheme, as the development design evolved, a local need was identified with an existing kindergarten provider relocating to another part of the site.

A recent report by United for All Ages suggests that children who regularly mix with older people see improvements to their language development, reading and social skills, while older people’s interaction with children helps lessen symptoms of loneliness and isolation. Although the kindergarten is entirely separate to the later living and care provision, its close proximity to these facilities will allow the school to fulfil its plans to further intergenerational care. One of the central planks of its vision is to establish close links with the new facilities for older people on the site to offer mutual psychological benefits and learning experiences for young and old alike.

Spaces that promote healthier lifestyles

Our design for King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park opens up a previously closed-off area of south Belfast and gives it back to the people of the city. A new park has been created at the centre of the whole scheme and all the main components have access to it, ensuring permeability and connectivity throughout the whole site.

The public realm spaces for the development of the wider King's Hall development play a vital role in creating a character and sense of place within the new development, while also being sympathetic to the local heritage. Our aim in the design has been to create an attractive, safe and healthier environment where people want to live, work and visit.

In looking to address some of the wider determinants of health, public spaces have been purposefully designed to encourage walking and cycling, as well as social connection; facilitating such behaviours is an essential component of the healthcare-led masterplan, delivering low-cost, high-value benefit for individual physical and mental health, while also reducing the burden on the NHS of treating preventable illnesses. Public and private spaces between buildings, alongside the central plaza featuring cafes and retail outlets, encourage connection and the promotion of active travel throughout the site. Cycle stands are located at important locations in order to deliver cycle provision for each of the plots throughout the overall masterplan.

For those looking for relaxation and contemplation, a pocket park has been introduced, providing a passive setting with a wide variety of evergreen, deciduous and herbaceous planting, all of which provide seasonal interest. Good access and minimal changes in level will ensure use of the park for all user groups, while lighting means the space can be used in the evenings and help with passive surveillance of the area.

An entrepreneurial health community

An important component of the King’s Hall masterplan, and key to unlocking the collaborative potential of the site and optimising the delivery of benefits, is the inclusion of Dataworks, a commercial hub totalling more than 40,000 sq ft. The hub is now anchored by precision medicine and data analytics firm Diaceutics, and provides a secure and collaborative space for companies to focus on the rapidly growing and highly valuable healthcare data market.

Funding for the site infrastructure and Dataworks development has been provided by the Northern Ireland Investment Fund, a £100m fund that provides debt finance for real estate, regeneration, low-carbon and infrastructure projects.

Capitalising on the smart city concept, Dataworks sits in direct proximity to healthcare professionals serving patients within the park and alongside Belfast’s major hospitals and universities, and innovative medical research facilities.

The combination of a vibrant and entrepreneurial health community, a large talent pool of scientific minds, and proximity to healthcare professionals treating patients, and universities such as Queen’s and University of Ulster, makes Dataworks a new spatial model for life sciences companies.

The offer to collaborate is expected to become a significant draw for other precision medicine companies from around the world, which will help fulfil the ambition of Dataworks to become a fully collaborative space where knowledge, research and expertise can be shared to unlock the promise of precision medicine globally.

According to an economic impact assessment, the King’s Hall Health and Wellbeing Park will boost the Northern Ireland economy by £47 million a year and support 640 full-time equivalent jobs.

Healthcare-led urban renewal

In co-locating social and economic activity, alongside access to quality public realm, the scheme also addresses the wider determinants of health and is a role model for reducing health inequalities that exist in many urban centres. In this regard, King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park identifies a healthcare-led solution for public authorities to work in partnership with the private sector to revitalise their city centres post pandemic. The Health & Wellbeing Park is a replicable model and robust enough to respond and evolve to place-specific needs or tenant requirements.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to delivery is the availability and cost of land in prime and populous urban areas, where the competition from residential can see sites quickly snapped up. Where land is in short supply, the model can become denser, building vertically rather than horizontally. One only has to look to Australia where ‘vertical villages’ have been the norm for some time in the retirement living sector, partly responding to retirees’ desire to live near vibrant urban centres, close to shops, restaurants and cultural opportunities. According to the Property Council of Australia’s 2021 Retirement Living Census, 41 per cent of new later living developments in 2020-21 were classed as ‘vertical’ in nature.

Building vertically permits more people to live in a serviceable area and allows more businesses and services – health or otherwise – to operate in the same building or nearby. It’s a win-win situation, with the economies of scale ensuring the affordable delivery of health services, while also increasing the possibility that residents’ demands will be addressed.

While there are perhaps some design challenges in the co-ordination of different uses and potential planning bureaucracy with regard to bringing different use classes together, such dynamic residential, lifestyle, leisure and wellbeing hubs present significant potential to bring a sense of vitality and excitement to communities with their mix of uses.

At the King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park, for example, we have included a range of small-scale local retail outlets at key locations throughout the site to help animate the street frontages and support a vibrant and energetic development. Incorporation of a range of residential development types promotes active functions throughout different times of the day and, by combining the residential and non-residential uses within one development, active frontages and public surveillance are enhanced to create a lively and safe environment.

Adaptive reuse to unlock opportunity

In urban centres, where the shift to homeworking and the growth of internet shopping have seen some high streets devastated by the closure of shops and office buildings, it would be reasonable to assume that the adaptive reuse of these redundant spaces could also form part of the plan, as our adaptive reuse of the iconic King’s Hall building proves. These spaces are not only accessible and serve a large patient population but their configuration and ceiling heights often make them easily and immediately adaptable, whether to modular operating theatres or to accommodate vital equipment for diagnostic purposes, such as MRI scanners.

By using ailing high streets and shopping centres to create a later living community, around which are focused a range of integrated health and support services, a critical mass of people can be brought back into town centres to unlock socio-economic opportunity and investment. In addition to being able to walk to a cafe to meet friends, go to the local cinema, and play an active role in the community, having easy access to healthcare provision could be a positive influencer in bringing footfall back into town centres, while life sciences and healthcare businesses open up employment opportunities. In this sense, healthcare-led proposals can play an important role in allowing high streets to rediscover their social purpose and reconfigure as ‘community hubs’, as retail guru Bill Grimsey has argued they must in order to survive.

Conclusion

The development of King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park reveals how public- and private-sector organisations can work together to unlock wider urban renewal by placing healthcare at the centre of regeneration strategies. In creating a destination that combines residential, lifestyle, leisure and wellbeing, the King’s Hall Health & Wellbeing Park fosters a place for culture, community and prosperity that can improve social cohesion, health equity, and economic opportunity for all.

About the author

Gonzalo Vargas del Carpio is head of healthcare at Todd Architects.