Blacktown Brain and Spinal Institute

This Brain & Spine Institute is a facility which makes an astonishing offer: - one of service - one of research - one of application - one of hope. The architecture of the Blacktown Brain & Spine Institute reflects the uniqueness of the organs and the offer of the Institute. It will be a centre of health that doesn’t feel like a hospital at all. It will be a place that feels pleasant, almost like a vacation. The institute will enable medical practitioners to not only look at the brain and spine, but at the overall wellness of the patient, a purpose-built facility that allows seamless integration of research, clinical procedures and rehabilitation. If there is to be a corollary between the brain, the spine and a building that houses the institute then that building needs to celebrate what the organs are and what they do. The brain and spine. The brain is not yet fully understood. It includes 86 billion neurones; each transferring information by electrons to 10,000 others. It controls perfunctory functions but has the capacity to respond to the randomness of the environment it finds itself in. The brain and Central Nervous System process our environment through our senses - smell, sound, taste, touch, sight. It is complex – we use them and operate on them without fully understanding them. It is about totality – they control our whole body and being. Conceptually, they are unlike any other components of the human body. The Architecture. A building that appears challenging, complex and expressive would not be out of place. One that through its configuration can facilitate and encourage knowledge transfer is highly desirable. It should be configured to help people engage with each other at all levels – practitioners, researchers, patients, visitors & the public. It wants to be a place of wonder – rich and engrossing, a place where people want to be. It should be both functional and static for orientation and circulation and yet fluid and dynamic to enrich and reveal. At once stable but delightful, unexpected and fulfilling. A full sensory experience should be available – sight, smell, touch, taste and sound. Hospital Architecture. In our present world, the hospital building type is conceived as a diagram that gets built. A design-free zone for much of its conception, Architecture finds itself as an add-on. Colour and art applied as an afterthought to personalise and humanise spaces derived from technical benchmarks and cost formulas. With rare exceptions there is little effort or energy directed at expressing what the facility may be about. Opportunity lost. Why wouldn’t one express the hope, confidence, optimism and faith offered by the institution?