Ronald McDonald House

Ronald McDonald House has been conceived as a thirty bedroom ‘home from home’ providing comfort and shelter to the families of sick children being treated at the newly adjacent Royal Hospital for Children. An intuitive series of interconnected public, private and semi-private spaces provide a calming backdrop and a sense of the familiar to the guests staying in a temporary yet foreign environment.

The architecture addresses the inherent sensitivities of an end user reaching out for comfort and reassurance whilst embodying the surrounding character of the shipbuilding urban context. The result is a series of vernacular white brick forms, interconnected by green-roofed, white concrete porticos which in turn create an industrial silhouette fronting Govan Road - shielding the house from the noise of rumbling buses and screaming ambulances.

The plan forms a series of semi-enclosed courtyards providing visual and physical amenity space to the residents. These enclosures, in conjunction with the materiality of the brick, bring domesticity and human scale to the scheme; whilst offering an urban oasis of vibrant trees, shrubs and plants, contrasting with the otherwise institutional context of the Queen Elizabeth University (super) Hospitals Campus.