The Nook, Care Home Architecture Portfolio

Framingham Earl, Norfolk

New Children’s Hospice

East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH) provides end of life, respite, and palliative care for young people from infancy to mid-teens. The ‘nook’ was commissioned by EACH to provide a regional centre for the hospice’s activities with care facilities being augmented by family accommodation, staff training, administration, and conference facilities. As EACH is funded by public subscription the building is also capable of hosting public fundraising events for up to 200 people.

The intention is to provide the mental stimulation and physiotherapy necessary to enhance a child’s life experience. In addition to Hydrotherapy and Physiotherapy suites (which are also open to outside agencies) facilities also include a Music Room, Sensory Room and Day Activity Area for art therapy.

The building is arranged as a series of pitch-roofed single storey structures creating a building form which is both reassuringly familiar and appropriate for its rural setting. The construction adopts a ‘fabric first’ approach to energy efficiency with a building envelope insulated to a high standard and carefully detailed to achieve low air emissivity.

Internally the principal challenge was to maintain a friendly ambience and domestic scale whilst unobtrusively integrating the complex requirements of a modern healthcare facility.