Case study – Grafton Way Building

Grafton Way Building CASE STUDY

Improving and equipping hospital spaces

The University College Hospital Grafton Way Building (GWB) was officially opened by the then HRH The Prince of Wales in March 2022. GWB is home to one of only two of the UK’s proton beam therapy centres, Europe’s largest haematology centre and short-stay surgery.

Charitable funds have been used to enhance and equip this worldclass facility, through a variety of stunning art installations and state-of-the-art robotic surgery equipment.

Drawing upon research that demonstrates that views and experience of nature helps to improve patient recovery rates and wellbeing, GWB features light filled rooms, themes of nature, colours of the English country garden, uplifting artwork and restful outdoor terraces. Commissioned artworks include a large scale installation in the atrium, bespoke artist designs for patient rooms, staff areas and the critical care department, sculpture for the garden areas, backlit stained and fused glass artwork, and digital interactive artwork in the proton beam therapy areas.

The team behind the artwork were awarded first place in the Interior Design and Arts category at the 2021 European Healthcare

Design Awards. As part of our £5m funding for expansion of robotic surgery at UCLH, GWB is home to new surgical robots which are being used in procedures such as hip and knee replacements for the first time at UCLH. The benefits of robotic surgery –

more precision, quicker recovery and shorter lengths of stay in

hospital - are supporting UCLH’s recovery drive to reduce the long waiting lists caused by the pandemic. The impact of this work has attracted positive media coverage in The Guardian and the Evening Standard.

From the very beginning, it was important that the facility was not only designed to deliver the very best medical treatment, but also to make patients feel better too.

Guy Noble

Arts and heritage curator, UCLH

1,442

DOUBLE THE NUMBER OF HIP AND KNEE PROCEDURES ON THE PREVIOUS YEAR