The best of health

摘要

Ashfield Healthcare's building deserves a better context than the estate of crude brick retail sheds it borders. Architect Shedkm has done what it can to distance the building from its neighbours, setting it back from the road at the front as far as the earth berm behind would allow, and addressing the balancing pond at the south-east end, with planting to grow up to obscure the main Nottingham Road beyond. A small compensation was the absence of problems with planning permission. Facing the building, you see instead the long, low, white crafted lines of a latter-day Case Study House writ large; its floating-above-the-ground achieved with 'V' pilotis, providing undercroft parking. Coming obliquely from the reception area is a marble-faced wall, at first encased in a glass box with bright yellow stairs, then flowing on to wrap a drum containing an auditorium.