CircleBath Private Hospital
Large composite planters from IOTA’s Boulevard range
feature at Foster + Partners' radical new CircleBath private hospital project. The planters are used principally to create a tranquil, screened space on the outside patio adjacent to the main reception point and café. Further sets of planters are used to green the northern facade, and to signpost the route to the public entrance.
The planters selected
are the
DELTA 45 Trough 100 >> and the
DELTA 45 Square 45 >> from IOTA’s
Boulevard >> range of high-performance, Fibre Reinforced Cement [FRC] planters. CircleBath is maintained by
Urban Planters >> who specified IOTA’s planters for the scheme.
Designed by leading architects Foster + Partners,
CircleBath is a £30 million, 28-bed private hospital southeast of Bath, opened in February 2010. CircleBath is Foster + Partners’ first hospital, and the first in a programme of new independent hospitals commissioned by Health Properties for Circle – which is an employee-owned group of 1,200 clinicians and hospital workers organised along the lines of ‘John Lewis Partnership’, seeking to offer a radical departure from orthodox approaches to hospital planning. Foster + Partners intended that “CircleBath’s compact design encourages a sense of community and well-being with facilities more comparable to a luxury hotel rather than a traditional hospital. It is planned around a central light filled atrium, promoting a sense of orientation and intimacy that is commonly lacking in larger hospitals…whilst sympathetic landscaping, by landscape architects Plincke, emphasises the therapeutic natural environment to create the opposite of an institutional atmosphere”.
