Touch of animal magic as £15m pet hospital named best new building

Published on Friday 20 November 2009 21:46

AN ANIMAL hospital has been named Scotland's best new building.

The 15 million Glasgow University complex, in the grounds of its Garscube campus, beat off competition from ten other buildings – including a boathouse, a primary school, a cancer research complex and a five-star hotel – to scoop what is now the UK's richest architectural prize.

Judges of the annual Andrew Doolan Prize, run by the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland, said the building's "great triumph" was the way it integrated into the landscape.

New design practice Archial Architects, recently formed after a merger of several major firms, received the 25,000 prize at the Scottish Parliament building last night, days after winning the supreme award from the Glasgow Institute of Architects.

The hospital – which has state-of-the-art facilities for animal owners and is also a cutting-edge training and research centre – was built beneath a new hillside created on the estate, in the Bearsden area.

It is said to be the most advanced of its kind in Europe and is equipped with MRI and CT scanners, an underwater treadmill and a pain and rehabilitation centre.

The hospital, which opened only in September, is expected to treat about 6,000 animals each year and can perform surgery at any time of the day or night in several advanced operating theatres.

About 90 per cent of its patients will be cats and dogs, although other pets will be cared for there. Some 120 veterinary students and about 30 veterinary nurses will be trained there each year.

The judges' citation read: "The building is set unobtrusively into its setting, a massive grassed roof creating a new hillside within the landscape.

"Its great triumph is the unique and ingenious way it integrates a very substantial medical facility within the parkland setting of the Garscube estate. This is a highly complex work of architecture which sets new standards in the design of buildings for veterinary medicine."

Russell Baxter, one of the architects involved in the project, said: "One of our chief concerns when conceiving the design for this facility was how to create a large hospital building without ruining the beautiful green space for which the Garscube Estate is renowned.

"Essentially, our solution involved lifting up the ground, peeling off the grass and placing the new building underneath."

The award was instigated in 2002 by the celebrated architect Andrew Doolan and it was renamed in his honour after he died two years later.

Professor Andrew MacMillan, chairman of the judging panel, said: "While the Small Animal Hospital was the judge's unanimous choice as winner, a number of other buildings came very close. Scottish architecture is in remarkably good heart."

The animal hospital was chosen from a shortlist of 11 projects, which also included the controversial new Hotel Missoni, in Edinburgh's Royal Mile, a boathouse on the banks of Loch Tay, the Beatson Institute's new cancer research centre in Glasgow and the conversion of a run-down former swimming pool in Edinburgh to create a new arts centre.

The new Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow, the joint Niddrie Mill and St Francis primary school campus in Edinburgh and a social housing project in Glasgow also made the shortlist.

Last year's Doolan prize was shared for the first time by the conversion of a former stable block in Castlemilk, Glasgow, and a new Edinburgh University complex.