The palatial future of public health – Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC)

Project name: Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) 

Client:  Victorian Department of Health, Plenary Health, and Grocon PCL joint venture

Project partners: DesignInc, Silver Thomas Hanley, McBride Charles Ryan 

Overall project cost: $1.1 billion

Project Size: 130,000 m²

The creation of a new healthcare facility is a feat that requires ingenuity, coordination and long-term thinking. Traditionally, hospital design and architecture has favoured the need for constraints, such as those outlined by a functional space program. Program objectives are given, room requirements are supplied, and block diagrams are created – in short, functionality is the priority. However, as forward-thinking designers of these spaces point out, functionality alone is not enough to build hospitals that last, or are capable of evolving and shifting as our needs do. 

Completed in 2016, the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre (VCCC) is the preeminent example of a hospital project determined to disrupt this singular focus on functionality. At its core, the VCCC is a space that values a mix of approaches to find new solutions to pervasive problems. Delivered by two architects with strong track records in healthcare facilities, Silver Thomas Hanley and DesignInc, along with newcomer-in-health-design McBride Charles Ryan, the facility is now the jewel in the crown of Melbourne's prestigious Parkville Biomedical Precinct. 

In 2010, ID-LAB was engaged to design the wayfinding strategy throughout the VCCC. Our early engagement allowed us to work directly with the architects to help create a space that upheld the project’s original vision – to dream of a better tomorrow. 

Objective: To create the hospital of tomorrow 

The VCCC is more than a building – it is an awe-inspiring vision of what the future of public healthcare should look and feel like. 

Integrating cancer research, education and patient care in one facility, the VCCC is a complex, multi-purpose facility united by a single, people-centric mission – to save lives, improve cancer patients’ lives, and find a cure. Occupying the junction between the Melbourne CBD, Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbourne, the proposed site would have to fulfil a number of roles. It had to link patients with the existing Royal Melbourne Hospital and connect with the education facilities of the nearby University of Melbourne, while also expanding the capacity and functionality for treatment, care and research of cancer in the state. With the prevalence of cancer in Victoria estimated to rise by 40 per cent in the next ten years, the VCCC’s mission is a critical one. Architecturally and medically, the space would have to set a new standard in global health design. 

Originally a public-private partnership, the VCCC project champions the idea that if more minds dedicated to cancer can work closely together, the faster we can find ways to reduce the impact of cancer in our community. Our role as the strategic wayfinders on this project was to ease patients into care, draw top researchers to work in spaces that are equipped and beautiful, and support the architectural vision to create a facility that inspires hope. Our strategy throughout the VCCC was to work with the integration of light, space, landscape and materiality to encourage the right conditions to improve interactions between people and their environment. 

Our approach: True intuitive wayfinding 

On rare occasions, we are granted the opportunity to engage with architects and designers at a project’s inception point. We can see where the proposed exit and entry points are. We can envision the main wayfinding landmarks, such as reception desks, stairs and lifts, and where they will be placed. Using social design and intuitive wayfinding concepts to guide us, we can work with the space – not against it – to improve the user’s experience. The VCCC was one such project where we were able to heavily participate in the architectural vision coming to life. Many of our early interventions were listened to and integrated and, as a result, the space is better for it. 

Discussions with the architects at the planning stage allowed us to integrate elements of intuitive wayfinding as standard into the VCCC. For example, we used physical barriers and natural line-of-sight to improve patient flow from a singular entry and exit point to the main reception desk. Upon entering the VCCC, the user is immediately greeted by a space that is clear, bright and expansive. The staircase spirals upwards to reveal 13 dynamic, organic and flowing stories of patient beds, labs and allied health facilities. Originally designed to obscure the lifts on the opposite wall, we collaborated with the architects to adjust their design to swing the staircase in the other direction, helping make the potentially obscured abundantly visible. What is visible can be better understood, helping to reduce stress often associated with more constrictive, confusing healthcare spaces. 

From a navigation perspective, we’ve followed our own methodology and best practice when designing the VCCC’s wayfinding system. Designed for now, but also planned for the future, our integration of alphanumeric codes function as an easy-to-recognise naming and directional system for first-time visitors through to staff. Running systematically from bottom to top, this code works to ease patient and visitor anxiety by providing a sense of order and reducing the need to second guess the destination. This coding system is designed to be accommodating for more than one service depending on the current need, providing the system with the room to grow and fill gaps as they appear or change. On the floor themselves, the alphanumeric codes continue in a logical and legible order, working with the open, light and expansive space to help the user see exactly where they need to go from the moment the lift opens.  

The team also used colour to prompt memory, aid in space recognition and complement the wayfinding strategy. Within the wards, the team worked alongside interior designers to integrate colour into the floor design and ceiling light elements, helping patients and visitors to visually recognise where a clinic space began and ended. To help reduce parking anxiety, the ID-LAB team also used colour to boldly remind patients and visitors of the vehicle’s location, using its own bright language to create a visual memory to cut through the noise of an often loud, distressing hospital environment. 

The result is a wayfinding strategy that not only supports the architectural and building environment, but elevates it. From the beginning of our engagement on this project, our goal was to create a system that worked to unite the potentially disparate and opaque functions of the VCCC. We are immensely proud of the work we have delivered for this project, and will continue to advise on as the building grows to match and anticipate the community’s needs.

The outcome: A world-class landmark in healthcare 

Traditionally, hospitals are designed to deliver health care. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are delivering health or wellbeing. As more research emerges about the inherent links between architecture and wellbeing, the challenge we still face is how to create a space that can deliver on health promises today, while being flexible enough to tackle the future. As strategic wayfinders, our role is to use the tools and skills at our disposal to help those seeking the right way both now 30 years in the future to find it, and hopefully, towards better overall health.

The VCCC is an example of a healthcare facility that has prioritised functionality and form. At an architectural level, it goes beyond plugging in the right functional elements traditionally associated with a hospital. Instead, it prioritises people. Specifically, it prioritises their collective experience with the space, including how they navigate it. 

It’s on projects like these that our team’s skills, expertise and genuine enthusiasm for people-centric wayfinding design shines through. With its blend of beautiful functionality, the VCCC is a landmark hospital that is focused on motion; on the fast-paced movement from research to treatment, the flow between patients and doctors, and the elements of knowledge and experience needed to battle cancer.