For many years, clinical practice has already acknowledged the benefits of multidisciplinary team (MDT) working to provide joined-up thinking and holistic medical care for patients.

Innovative Health Trusts and Universities have extended this further to the relationship between clinicians and researchers, co-locating health and education facilities to enable greater and integration and a faster transfer of knowledge from research to practice. The results of translational research have been proved to radically shorten the “bench-to-bed” gap from years to months.

At Hopkins, two of our buildings in particular have explored the benefits of co-location and the way in which architecture can supercharge the interaction not only between clinicians and researchers, but between researchers themselves. Both the Alder Hay Children’s Hospital and the Pears Building at the Royal Free were joint ventures between an NHS Trust/Charity and one or more universities, resulting in a highly effective new hybrid typology combining healthcare, research and education.

Institute in the Park, Alder Hey Children’s Hospital

Working with the Alder Hey Hospital and adjacent University of Liverpool, together with UCLAN, Liverpool John Moore’s University and Edge Hill University, we designed a flagship project which brought together academic researchers, healthcare professionals, technology companies, commercial research teams, students and educators. A corridor-free mix of laboratories, teaching spaces, lecture theatres, and open plan and cellular office accommodation focus around an atrium which incorporates write-up space, a library and cafeteria.

Pears Building, Royal Free Hospital

UCL’s Institute of Immunity and Transplantation in the existing Hospital has been quintupled in size in an adjoining new building to create a globally significant clinical research centre, utilising the proximity of the patient cohort in the hospital for rapid turnaround translational research. Two hundred researchers interact with clinicians, who can call on the resource of the clinical trials patients who are also housed in the building. Write-up space is deliberately segregated from labs and grouped together around a whole building atrium to encourage the “collision co-efficient” necessary for new ideas.

One of the challenges of these types of buildings is how to mediate the need for both privacy and interaction, together with how the model might be expanded to co-locate other kinds of complementary space and use within this type of building. Evidential data increasingly show that researchers need relatively quiet and secluded spaces for deep work, balanced with spaces in which that work can be shared and debated. Shared spaces can offer different levels of formality, from a staircase or touchdown point to a seminar room or conference area. Additionally, increased interactions such as those between researchers, public, and patients, can bring additional benefits.

Both buildings are relatively new, so outcomes will continue to emerge, but both are already making an impact on the various layers of communities they serve. The Institute in the Park, completed in 2018, has been successful in drawing in increasing numbers of academic partners, whilst The Pears Building has created a new professional and social hub for wider hospital staff.