“Our health architecture team at ARCH create dynamic hospitals and healthcare facilities with strong identities, creating clear responsive workflows for clinical staff and legible navigation for patients and visitors. The team look beyond conventional designs to understand the location, and embrace connectivity, flexibility, legibility and soft edges,” says Ron Bridgefoot, who leads the ARCH team as Principal Consultant, in collaboration with Architectus (who are developing the exterior design) for the Stage 2 $710m Ipswich Hospital Expansion.

The Ipswich Hospital redevelopment delivers a new world-class health precinct, integral to the Ipswich CBD revitalisation and springboarding generational change for a region experiencing significant growth.

“In Ipswich, almost 20,000 people visited the hospital’s emergency department in the last quarter of 2023. And as the region continues to grow, that number will continue to increase, which makes this massive expansion project so important." Steven Miles, Queensland Premier.

The facility's overall expansion strategy and architectural design involve:

• The ARCH led architecture and design team of 32 sub-consultants across multiple disciplines
• The Queensland Government Architects
• Ipswich City Council Urban Designers
• The Queensland Urban Design and Places Panel.

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The innovative healthcare design approach incorporates a versatile floor plate based on a site-specific grid formation that has underpinned the redevelopment strategy; this approach has provided the basis for a flexible and highly adaptable building for various health services.

The first stage of demolishing the existing mental health building is nearing completion, and the preliminary construction works for Stage 2 Detailed Design will start mid-year. This stage will involve the creation of a multi-story acute services building that will include:

• 200 new beds
• A new and expanded emergency department
• Additional operating theatres
• A satellite medical imaging service
• 8 bed CCU
• Back-of-house services
• Shell spaces for future development

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The project completion is expected by late 2027.

Team: Ron Bridgefoot, Qui Lu, Noémie Dez, Nicole Eadie, Jaslyn Ng, Anthony Cheng, Alan Savage, Scott Chapple, Aliaksandr Merkulau, Charles Simons, Daniel Avila, Sally Bates, Alex Rayfield, Felix McCabe, Ben Wilson, Hamish Coleman, Thomas Francis, Erickson Perez, Kelly Lau, Bash Dissanayaka