Peninsula University Hospital consolidates an existing low rise hospital into a 12-storey tower and podium. Relative was engaged by the PPP consortium to produce a design strategy and materials system for both ground plane and internal retail interfaces, a key public-facing layer where the hospital meets the street, patients and its visitors.

Working across scales — from architectural to tenancy and finer design elements — we established a coherent material and spatial system for active uses, public interfaces, retail architecture and social spaces. The intent was consistency without repetition: a ground plane legible enough to navigate for people of all abilities, but varied enough to support the different registers of arrival, gathering, waiting, food on the go and respite that coexist within the hospital environment. A clear material language and infill architectural methodology was developed in collaboration with the basebuild consortium led by Bates Smart and Architectus.

This work sits alongside the building's separation of public and clinical circulation, giving the ground floor its own coherent identity distinct from the clinical program above. The result is a series of activated interfaces built to hold food, retail and other amenity uses — through consistent typologies with varied modular outcomes — as a considered layer in its own right, not a residual space between larger architectural moves. The materials and surfaces were envisioned as durable yet still tactile and warm, a series of urban living rooms in contrast to clinical spaces.