Dublin City Council's planners have decided to approve a €320 million redevelopment scheme for the Mater Hospital, including the relocation of Temple Street Children's Hospital to Eccles Street.
The new children's hospital is to be located on the huge gap site occupied by the Mater's car park, which has been in place since the demolition of Scoil Caitríona and the Dominican College 20 years ago.
It has been designed in the form of a large urban block, five to six storeys high, between the Mater Private Hospital and a terrace of protected structures at 30-38 Eccles Street adjoining the original hospital.
Though contemporary in style and one floor higher than Georgian buildings in the vicinity, project architects Murray O'Laoire and Brian O'Connell and Associates say it has been designed to complement them.
The aim is to reinstate the north side of Eccles Street, provide a new entrance forecourt to both hospitals and to enhance pedestrian access by widening footpaths and providing a new internal pedestrian route.
A rooftop helipad is to be provided over the new entrance concourse, serviced by "hotlink lifts" which will ensure direct emergency access from the helipad to core clinical departments in both hospitals.
The new children's hospital is designed around a large external courtyard within which the central lift and stairs core is located to provide bridged access to all departments at each level in the building. The existing entrance concourse is to be demolished, as well as the College of Nursing on North Circular Road, and an early 20th-century building known as Rosary House, to the rear of Eccles Street.
A major extension to the adult hospital is also part of the scheme and has been designed by a team led by Scott Tallon Walker. This will incorporate a new lift-shaft linking with the existing block.
A large two-level underground carpark is to be provided in the area between Eccles Street and the north wall of a new Accident and Emergency building. This will eliminate surface car parking on the site.
The external fabric of the new children's hospital will comprise modular, cubist-like pre-cast panels over a recessed glass plane and natural stone base which is animated with coloured fin walls at street level.
A two-storey glass box structure will project at the corner of the building on Eccles Street at the junction with the new forecourt facing Nelson Street, to mark clearly the entrances to both hospitals.
The Eccles Street façade will have a series of projecting timber ventilation grilles to give it vertical emphasis as well as projecting windows at the end, adjacent to the Mater Private Hospital. The new entrance forecourt will replace the existing roadway and entrance. It has been designed as a hard landscaped south-facing space, large enough to accommodate ambulance and taxi drop-off.
The forecourt, which will also accommodate public lifts from the underground car park, an external terraced area and a new public café/canteen, will be protected by four large umbrella-like glazed canopies to the rear.
The entrance concourse for the adult hospital will be brought forward of the existing entrance by some 24 metres in order to increase its scale and engage more with the street.
The existing three-storey concourse will be replaced by a nine-storey, stone-clad structure, rising to a height of 30 metres (99 feet), similar to the existing hospital building which dates from the early 1980s.
The development includes a new north-south public route from the entrance concourse to a new outpatients' entrance on North Circular Road, effectively linking Nelson Street with Glengarriff Parade.
The proposed new adult hospital ward block will be located in a new building to the south of the existing building. Four storeys over basement, it is to be clad in pre-patinated copper over a continuous glass wall.
A new pathology and technical services building is to be located on North Circular Road in the areas of the existing child and family guidance unit, and its architects say it will improve the quality of the streetscape there.
The building line is set back marginally from the existing boundary wall to North Circular Road to widen the footpath and allow sufficient space for the planting of trees along this heavily-trafficked road.
The location of the new stairs and lift is designed to accommodate future long-term expansion of the Mater to the west and southwest, as set out in the development control plan for the hospital.
The estimated cost of the project, which is being carried out by Mater and Children's Hospital Development Ltd, includes some €70 million for equipment. The project is being managed by Ms Laura Magahy, former managing director of Temple Bar Properties.
