|
Demelza House Children's Hospice |
|||
|
|
 |
||
|
A design to provide the South-East with its first children's hospice, a low sprawling building modelled on a traditional Kent farm-house; a farmstead which creates a home from home atmosphere providing the children with a familiar family environment. Specialist facilities within the 6 acre site include a multi-sensory room, jacuzzi room, playrooms, computer rooms and music rooms. The landscaped gardens have been designed to stimulate and entertain incorporating play areas for wheelchair users, adventure houses and quiet corners. In addition there are paddock areas, and a chapel situated within the main oast. Demelza House received the Built in Quality Award for recognition of high standards of construction and workmanship. Extract is taken from The Daily Telegraph, Tuesday, November 27,2002; "Architecturally, Demelza House is a marvel: modelled on a traditional Kent farm-house. Derek Phillips, the architect, cared deeply about every detail, for he designed it - and helped raise the £3.5 million to create it. Everything at Demelza house is designed to give those children happiness, not just when they are close to death, but while they are still well enough to enjoy the hospice's facilities. The house fairly buzzes with life and zings with colour. Art of all kinds brightens wall painted a kaleidoscope of rainbow hues. However desperately sad the situation of individual families, Demelza House is not gloomy. Light streams in from the gardens, which give on to fields and woods. The atmosphere is that of a home from home and, at the core of the house, is a vast pine kitchen table where employees, volunteers and the children all eat together. Everything that could possibly give pleasure to a sick child, or that child's siblings, is on hand. There's an art room, a music room, a space for teenagers equipped with snooker and table-football, and a computer room where children can play games. Hoists, plugs and oxygen supplies are discreetly placed in every room so that children can get assistance and treatment, but the feel is never clinical. The spa bath for example, is housed in a room decorated with tiles painted with reeds and ducks, so that it looks like a pond. Even the specially chilled bedroom at the end of the corridor has a reassuring warmth to it. Here, although the hospice cannot currently offer palliative care, children who have died can be laid to rest. When I see it, the decor is arranged with a baby in mind: a cot decked out in white frills lies on top of the bed and nursery pictures hang on the walls. Next door, a private sitting room gives a grieving family the opportunity to sit together in peace. It is not hard to imagine how much it might mean to a parent to be able to say goodbye in these surroundings, rather than the formality of a hospital." |
|||