A little light shed on plan

Design tweaks have been made to the new Dunedin Hospital to avoid shadows falling across the gardens outside Dunedin Railway Station.

It will be some months before architectural drawings of the two new hospital buildings will be made public.

However, the project’s recently appointed programme director Mike Barns said the buildings’ positions on the hospital’s central city site had "drifted north" to prevent them blocking sunlight from Anzac Square.

Project architects had been asked for shadow diagrams of how the new buildings would likely affect surrounding streets, and Mr Barns said those had prompted a retreat of the new buildings from the edge of Castle St.

"We know it will be a challenge to preserve the existing light on those spaces ... in the next set of designs that will become clearer.

"We have essentially moved the bulk location of the buildings away from that part of the site as far as possible and drifted them north so that we reduce the shade penetration across those areas as much as we can."

The latest preliminary drawings showed "absolutely minimal" impact on Anzac Sq from the new hospital, Mr Barns said.

Parking had also been discussed by the design team, and the project would meet Dunedin City Council building and consent requirements, Mr Barns said.

"The design team is talking about what we need to do to achieve that now."

mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz