New Starter – Ruairi McCance

Fleet Architects is thrilled to announce the addition of Ruairi McCance to their team in a senior architect role. Joining in January 2024, Ruairi brings a wealth of experience from his previous work in the high-end private residential sector. Over the past five years, he has specialized in designing modern extensions to Victorian terraced houses in London, emphasizing materiality, texture, and the interplay of light and shadow. His adeptness at working within tight spatial constraints and his passion for fine detailing and technical solutions will be invaluable to Fleet Architects’ diverse portfolio.

Ruairi’s extensive on-site experience, often overseeing projects from concept to completion, equips him with practical insights that are crucial for high-quality architectural design. His ability to blend hand-drawing and computer-aided design techniques ensures a seamless integration of traditional and modern methodologies. This skill set aligns perfectly with Fleet Architects’ commitment to delivering innovative and functional designs across various sectors, including healthcare, residential, and public infrastructure.

Beyond his professional achievements, Ruairi is an avid reader and a dedicated sportsman, holding a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and a blue belt in Judo. His unique combination of technical expertise and creative vision, alongside his personal interests, adds a dynamic element to the Fleet Architects team. Ruairi’s addition marks a significant enhancement to Fleet’s capabilities, promising continued excellence in their architectural endeavors.

A New Era for Machine-A

The Fleet Team, led by Val Tse working with Daniel Collinson, worked with the Machine-A and Tomorrow Ltd teams to design and delivered an extension and complete refit of the iconic Soho, Brewer Street store.

The new store extends brand identity developed in the Shanghai Store which opened in 2022, re-thought for a constrained historic unit in London’s fashion Mecca.

More information and project page to follow.

Sunday Telegraph  – ‘Dream Team’

Sunday Telegraph – Published 25/09/2022

The great British pub is in danger of extinction – here’s how we saved ours.

Local boozers are under threat amid spiralling costs, staff shortages and changing habits – but communities are coming to the rescue.

‘We’ve assembled a dream team to bring our local boozer back to life’

Kerry and Jaime Bishop, Tim Field, Nigel Ritchie and Richard Henson, owners of the Shakespeare in Margate.

“ ‘How long are we going to stay friends?’ will probably be your first question,” jokes Kerry Bishop, one of the masterminds behind the project to resurrect the Shakespeare on Margate’s seafront.

She and husband Jaime, an architect, had lived around the corner for 20 years. Given its location, they were unable to understand why no one had been able to make a success of it. For the past seven years it had been shut and a home to an ever-growing number of pigeons. And so they made the decision to try for themselves. Not completely foolhardy however, they drew together friends whose skill-sets complemented each other and the project.

Kerry, who has formerly been managing director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and chief operating officer of Frieze, is no stranger to large projects, while Jaime and Richard Henson are partners of their architecture firm, Fleet. They own the building and are redesigning it.

They’ve also got Nigel Ritchie, a postdoctoral research associate at King’s College London, on board as a co-owner and investor, and Tim Field as a co-owner and executive general manager. Field ran the Heavenly Social and the Sun and 13 Cantons in Fitzrovia, London, at the height of their success and has turned around many failing London pubs.

“By blending our expertise we hope we’ve got a better chance of making this work,” says Bishop.

Aware that a pub can not survive on booze alone, they’re spreading their risk. As well as offering rooms, the Shakespeare will be a co-working space, to meet the demand of the growing home-worker sector. Their hope is that it will become a space “beyond boozing”.

Already Kent County Council has acknowledged the potential and has awarded Fleet a Kent and Medway Business Fund loan; the proceeds contributed to the purchase of the building. Since completing the purchase in April they’re knee-deep in refurbishment.

Neatly side-stepping the uncertain winter, the Shakespeare will “re-open” in spring 2023. Calling upon their art-world connections means the interior promises to be a cut above the usual pub scheme. There will be work from artists such as Joe Duggan, Baraj Matthews and Matthew Raw – “all young and navigating their way through the art world,” says Kerry, who is also hopeful a more established local artist might lend her support. “Tracey Emin seems eager for the Shakespeare to open – avidly following the social media. We’ve invited her for a hot chocolate by the fire after her wild swims.”

This is no vanity project though. “We’ve gone into this with our eyes wide open,” says Jaime. “Of course it needs to make money. It needs to employ at least 12 people, as our goal is to make sure that it’s an employer for the town.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/life/great-british-pub-danger-extinction-how-saved/

Words  – Boudicca Fox Leonard

Photo – Christopher Pledger

Newham Hospital Adult Critical Care Unit and Ward Ground Breaking

The Fleet team will attend a ground breaking ceremony with local MPS and dignitaries at Newham University Hospital, part of the Barts Trust, in October to mark the start of enabling works for a new Adult Critical Care Unit designed with Health Spaces, QED Structures and DSSR MEP.

The new facility will provide 14 ICU style beds including 4 Isolation Rooms.  The ground floor ward comprises 26 inpatient beds, including 10 single en-suite ‘side rooms’.

‘A funky seaside stay with impeccable art credentials’ Fort Road Hotel in The Times

Published 03.09.22

The recently opened Fort Road Hotel in Margate, designed by Fleet Architects with Clients Matthew Slotover of Frieze, Artist Tom Gidley and Gabriel Chipperfield, the son of designer David Chipperfield, has been receiving glowing reviews across national and international press.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/fort-road-hotel-margate-review-a-funky-seaside-stay-with-impeccable-art-credentials-pg9stcmsn

Image Credit – Fort Road Hotel, Tom Gidley

James Paget Decant Ward Planning Permission Recieved

The Fleet Architects Team working with Client Health Spaces, a multi-disciplinary team from WSP and assisted by Bidwell’s has successfully achieved planning permission for a new ward block at James Paget University Hospital in Great Yarmouth.

The project is keystone to the urgent Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) works at the Hospital but has been employed by te clinical team to explore emerging practices in ward design to apply to the New Hospital Programme redesign of the host building.

Most critical to this is the design of the single bed wards, often referred to as side rooms, which make up 20 of the 28 rooms.  The design process has involved lengthy and intensive clinical engagement which is covered in a Health Spaces Hosted Webinar “The Journey Towards Single Inpatient Rooms” (https://health-spaces.com/news/single-patient-rooms/).

The new facility is being constructed using offsite volumetric systems and will open in early 2023.

Health On the High Street – Kettering

Following the success of the Well Placed Hospital essay, which was shortlisted for the 2021 Wolfson Economics Prize, Fleet have been working with the Health Spaces team to explore the benefits to the acute system, the town and the patients of relocating a range of outpatients and community services within highly accessible town centre locations.

Jaime Bishop, Fleet Director writes on the topic via LinkedIn:

“The grim underlying picture is of an enduring and enormous vacant real estate capacity, often in the areas most in need of regeneration.  In our 2021 shortlisted Wolfson Economics Prize essay ‘The Well Place Hospital’ Fleet Architects Ltd working with MAAP Architects demonstrated the opportunity and mutual benefits to the NHS, Patients, Population, Planners and Place of greater reintegration of the Health and Social Care Infrastructure. Our essay looked at a range of small city and market town scale locations to test the viability of our hypothesis.

Reflecting on the growing interest in town centre regeneration our sense is that, without due commitment to services on the high street, and particular public services, there is a real risk that any rebirth of high streets tell a rather limited story biased towards affluence, the artisanal and the most advantaged of metropolaise. Perhaps those also controlling the message.

The NHS has a long history of investment in new building systems and pattern books – and eyes will always be turned by a catchy new idea or sketch – but not since the workhouse infirmaries, flirtations with poly-clinics aside, has there been real interest and need to explore urban opportunity – including reuse of existing buildings and the carbon they embody.

We have some really exciting Health on the High Street™ projects coming through in the next few months to add proof of concept – from Out-Patient decants to office blocks or shipping centres to CDCs, community Mental Health access and enhanced Primary Care. We are particularly excited about the shopping centre – an idea we’ve been kicking around for years since first referring to the typology when designing an Ambulatory Care Centre in the 2000s.

The economic outlook is particularly grim at the moment but there are also opportunities to be grasped.”

Pre Application for AFU at Lancaster Royal for Infirmary for University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust

Working with Health Spaces, The Fleet team have designed a new Acute Frailty Unit and base for the Fraility Intervention Team at Lancaster Royal Infirmary for The Morecambe Bay Hospital Trust.

The new proposal will be achieved with a mix of refurbishment and volumetric extension and is due to be submitted for planning in Autumn 2022.

Webinar – The Journey Towards Single Inpatient Rooms

(https://health-spaces.com/news/single-patient-rooms/).

Single patient rooms webinar | 28th July 10.30am – 11.30am

What are the benefits of a single room hospital? Should hospitals provide all patients with single rooms? What are the implications for single patient rooms under the New Hospital Programme (NHP) guidance? How can the design of multi-bed bays be evolved to improve patient and staff experience?

Research has shown that single rooms will increase patients’ privacy, dignity and confidentiality, in addition to giving patients more control over their immediate environment and consequently helping to aid the healing process. Yet the journey taken in designing new hospital ward layouts – balancing cost, space and a Trust’s bespoke requirements – can be challenging.

Join Jaime Bishop, Feet Director and Co-Chair of Architects for Health, Warren Edwards, Project Director at Health Spaces, Paula Miller, Chief Nursing Projects Officer (New Hospital Team) and Diane Goodwin, Operations Director for the New Hospital Programme, as the team highlights the journey taken by James Paget University Hospital as the Trust develops a new 28 bedded decant ward.

Lister Hospital – New Hybrid Vascular Theatre

Fleet Architects working with Health Spaces have been appointed to design a new Hybrid Vascular Theatre for the Lister Hospital site in Stevenage.

Theatre Suite will allow surgery and state of the art imaging to be undertaken at the same time in a single operating theatre. This means a team of vascular surgeons and interventional radiologists can work together to carry out endovascular procedures, treating problems with blood vessels without the need for open surgery.

Patients with major trauma will also benefit from the new theatre by allowing those with multiple injuries to undergo both endovascular and open surgery in the same place.

The Theatres will integrate an Ultra Clean System previous unused in the UK integrated with a Philips ceiling mounted C-Arm.