Architecture
Tall, long, functional mid-20th-century buildings dominate most of the long Falls Road side of the hospital, and give a plain look to a section of the busy road west of the Grosvenor Road and Springfield Road junction. On this stretch of Falls Road, the mid-20th-century hospital buildings face Saint Paul's Roman Catholic Church, Saint Dominic's Grammar School for Girls and typical, simple, historic terraced housing of Belfast (some converted into small shops and cafés). At the end of this stretch (near Broadway), the Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children occupies a smaller historic building of Victorian design.
Recent, typically simple functional buildings are located in the middle of the site bordering the Westlink, largely invisible from the Falls Road and Grosvenor Road. The hospital site stretches near Broadway on the west and downhill to border the Westlink city-link carriageway on the south, where recent functional buildings may be seen.
A slight addition to the main front of the West Belfast site in recent years is new railings (on Falls Road, going west from the junction of Grosvenor and Springfield Roads). The wavy pattern of the railings is reminiscent of the structure of DNA. There are little yellow Xs and Ys detailed for X- and Y-chromosomes, and portraits (laser-cut in sheet steel) chart the progress of a human life from birth to the age of 100.
Read more about this topic: Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast
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