Project
Levenshulme Health Centre
Client
Dr Arora
Location
Manchester
Levenshulme Health Centre follows in a line of health centres undertaken by Hodder Associates in which considerations for private/public and consultant/private space underpin the programme of the building.
Conceptually the public areas , by way of a waiting area and reception, are contained within a refurbished Victorian shell with the private areas of the consulting and treatment rooms in a new building which responds to the scale and mass of its adjoining neighbour. Articulating the two elements is a new glazed entrance positioned between the street and a rear car park which contains the primary vertical circulation and is announced by a canopy formed by a visual extension of the two bays. The whole sits on a plinth of pre cast concrete which, seemingly, wraps around the original building adding a new layer as an expression of its new use.
The new extension is of rendered cross wall construction infilled with glazed and western red cedar clad rainscreen panels which offer a clear legibility as to its use and a counterpoint to the solidity of the Victorian building.
“Many architects could deal with the functional and operational problems which it presents, resulting in a design which would engage with a local community. Hodder goes to another level. By embuing the design with a trace of the intellectual culture which architecture can represent, it becomes a building which can clear the gutters and sweep the streets, but also reach for the stars.”
Jeremy Melvin, RIBA Journal
June 2000