11th March 2024

Perega helps breathe new life into derelict hospital

The Ravenscourt Park Hospital, London, has stood derelict for almost 20 years. Once a busy healthcare facility, since its closure in 2006, the Grade-II listed site had fallen into disrepair… that is until the estate was acquired by TT Group (Telereal Trillium) in 2022.

Currently one of the UK’s largest investment and development firms, TT Group has big ambitions for the 1.56 Hectare (15,600m²) site and its surroundings. Principally, it plans to convert the hospital’s collection of iconic, Art Deco-inspired buildings into a new residential neighbourhood.

Sympathetic regeneration is at the heart of the project. TT Group has, in addition to providing 140 new homes, is committed to creating a flexible and accessible community space and integrating new infrastructure with minimal intervention into existing assets. Not only that, planned work will be carried out in as sustainable and sensitive a way as possible, preserving both the environment and the hospital’s historic fabric.

With the project still in its early stages, our team, headed up by Director Paul Jarvis, has been brought in by TT Group to provide engineering consultancy and design, initially for the planning phase and then through the detailed design and construction.

Particularly, we have supported the client on a handful of essential structural alterations, including adding floors onto the existing structure and extensions towards the rear of the main building to include a basement car park. Work has also encompassed the careful design of a transfer structure for a new five-storey residential block, which will sit atop the proposed basement car park.

Our scope included incorporating civil engineering features to reduce flooding and devising a sustainable drainage strategy. This involved carefully placing risk-mitigating systems, such as SuDS and OSDs, as well as integrating blue/green attenuation systems.

The project is at a relatively early design stage, however Perega has already provided guidance on a number of challenges. The vertical extensions have been sympathetically designed from a structural perspective to limit the building height and minimise any strengthening works to the existing structure. Both would have significantly added cost and potentially compromised the listed elements of the existing building. The basement carpark also had to be carefully planned to avoid compromising the integrity of the existing or surrounding buildings and infrastructure at the rear of the estate.

As Paul Jarvis says, “It’s a really exciting project to be involved in, especially in a part of London which is seeing an impressive level of redevelopment and regeneration. With a reputation for sympathetically working with and extending listed buildings, we have been brought on board not only to ensure the plans are structurally sound but to also safeguard the historic fabric of the existing listed hospital buildings. Whilst we’re at an early stage, plans have now been submitted, and we look forward to continuing our work with TT Group subject to planning approval.”

To find out more about our work in the residential sector, click here.