By their nature, hospitals are heavily internalised and intricately serviced buildings. So much so that less design priority is often given to the architectural composition of their facades than might be the case on other building types. The wave of PFI hospitals in the 2000s often unwittingly conformed to this theory, harnessing all manner of technical ingenuity and clinical prowess internally but often revealing themselves externally as bland, anodyne architectural containers. 

The sprawling University College Hospital campus in Bloomsbury, central London, is certainly no stranger to this affliction and while its Alfred Waterhouse-designed core historic buildings are an excellent example of Victorian cruciform hospital design, the incongruous whitewashed slab facades of its 2005 Llewelyn Davies Yeang main block oppress their historic surroundings and are a shocking example of contextual insensitivity. 

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