CHN William Lennox

Constructed in the 1970’s, the William Lennox Neurological Hospital Centre is a 159-bed hospital dedicated to the rehabilitation  and care of persons of all ages suffering from neurological conditions such as stroke, skull trauma, epilepsy, problems of consciousness or of mental development, in order to improve their quality of life. The William Lennox NHC is a reference in the domain of neurological rehabilitation for all phases of life.

The centre is located in the magnificent setting of the ‘Bois de Lauzelle’ woods (close to the NATURA 2000 zone), at Ottignies. This location encouraged our architects to reflect as widely as possible, in line with the requests of the centre. To respond to this request, Assar proposed not to construct the extra floor suggested by the project manager, but to add two further buildings in order to enable all of the care units to be reorganised while disturbing day to day activities as little as possible, and while improving comprehension of the way the hospital functions.

With a first extension the project enables an ‘emergence from coma’ care unit to be created, along with a technical floor for ergonomic therapy and a reorganisation of the care units for more comfort.  A second extension sees the creation of a day hospital for adults another for paediatric care and hydrotherapy, conceived for patients with neurological conditions.

Their reflections concentrated on :

• the use of natural and warm materials by orienting our colour choices towards those with these same characteristics and which add to the feeling of well-being and of protection of the patients and the personnel;
• respect and hospitality by developing a welcoming project both in terms of the comprehension of access to it and in the expression of its interior zones, and also by developing architecture which – cocoon-like – is reassuring and instils a feeling of being at home.

Assar won this competition thanks to its appropriate architectural responses.