Circle Hospital Reading
‘Circle Reading was a key step on our journey to creating the UK’s most efficient implementation process for our new build hospitals that are second to none – at a cost that is as efficient as any in the UK.’
Mark Cammies, Property Director, Circle Health
Circle Reading Hospital was Bryden Wood’s first major healthcare project for Circle Health – a 10,100 m² facility in Reading delivering elective surgery and orthopaedic care, completed to RIBA Stages 0–7. It is also the project from which Bryden Wood developed the ‘HP Way’ – a design framework built on lessons learnt across successive Circle Health schemes, establishing the processes and components that would guide the design of all future hospitals in the programme.
Project details:
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Circle Reading Hospital won the Building Better Healthcare Award for Best Internal Environment in the Patient Experience category – recognised for interiors that staff describe as resembling a luxury hotel rather than a traditional hospital. A two-and-a-half storey central atrium filled with natural light, leather sofas, and artwork sets the tone throughout the building.
Circle Health's ambition was the UK's lowest carbon hospital facilities: efficient to construct, efficient to run, financially sustainable, and architecturally lasting. Circle Reading was where that ambition became a building.
Circle Reading Hospital was delivered by Bryden Wood for Circle Health to provide elective surgery through GP referral, serving both private patients and NHS patients as part of the expansion of patient choice. The 10,100 m² facility in Reading includes five operating theatres, one endoscopy theatre, an imaging suite with MRI, CT, and X-ray capability, 29 en-suite inpatient bedrooms, and the Reading Orthopaedic Centre.
This was Bryden Wood’s first major healthcare project for Circle Health, with responsibility for architecture and engineering across all RIBA Stages 0–7. The project gave Bryden Wood the foundation on which to develop the ‘HP Way’ – a structured design framework that distils lessons from earlier schemes into repeatable processes, standard components, and Design for Manufacture and Assembly techniques, to be applied consistently across future Circle Health hospitals.
Circle Health’s ambition was to create the UK’s lowest carbon hospital facilities: buildings that are efficient to construct, efficient to run, financially sustainable, and architecturally lasting. Circle Reading Hospital was the first realisation of that ambition. Its interiors – a two-and-a-half storey central atrium filled with natural light, leather sofas, and artwork – are described by staff as resembling a luxury hotel rather than a traditional hospital. The Building Better Healthcare Award for ‘Best Internal Environment’ in the Patient Experience category recognised this achievement.
The learnings from Circle Reading Hospital directly informed the design of Bryden Wood’s subsequent Circle Birmingham Hospital, including the research into departmental adjacencies and patient and staff flow that underpins both projects.
Circle Reading Hospital established the design principles that Bryden Wood has applied across every subsequent healthcare project. The ‘HP Way’ – developed here, refined at Circle Birmingham, and built into the New Hospitals Programme – is the evidence that great hospital design gets better, and more efficient, every time it is repeated.
