Visitor Seating Arrangements [Southmead Hospital]

About This Project

Visitor Seating arrangements – Southmead Hospital

Ken Rand Partners was approached by their regular partner Carillion to help with the design of the atrium visitor seating redevelopment project at Southmead Hospital. The design of the seating arrangements had a set of very strict requirements and specifications to fulfill in order to be approved by the fire officer. The biggest challenge was to meet the fire resistant requirements, ensuring that the large seating arrangement weighted no more 160 kilograms. In total we supplied soft visitor seating arrangements that seat a minimum of 10 people each, for six areas. Due to the location in a hospital environment the seating had to be easily cleanable and be possible to move if required. Furthermore the use of anti-bacterial, non absorbent fabrics was essential, as well as meeting ergonomic standards set for these kind of environments. The sofas are 4 meters wide and 1.2 meters deep, it has been upholstered with Aqua Nova fabric, which is a high performance fabric featuring fire retardant, waterproof, anti-bacterial, breathable, urea and stain resistant properties. The legs and arms of the chairs have been manufactured using 75mm wide x 6mm thick stainless steel, grained and treated with a light coat of a protective material, to create a shell against corrosion. All the corners of the legs and arms have been rounded to prevent sharp edges and corners. One of the requirements for the Sofas was that each seating space was provided with arm rests to assist ease of standing and sitting for everyone. The project was a welcome challenge for the Ken Rand design team, and we are happy to have finished it successfully and to the satisfaction of the different parties involved in the project.