Hospital Master Planner – Richard Blight

Central Highland Rural Health has awarded a contract for development of the Master Plan for Daylesford Hospital to Blight, Blight and Blight. The Wombat Post talked to Richard, Blight, Architect and Director of Blight, Blight and Blight.

Tell me about Blight Blight and Blight – it sounds like a family firm?

 I set up Blight, Blight & Blight with a strange name which was awkward to say as a sort of statement that I intended to do things differently from everyone else, the rest grew fairly rapidly from that point. With a  terrible last name like Blight, I found that if I said it three times it didn’t sound as bad and no one would forget it.

What do you specialize in?

After years working with larger architectural practices across Australia, five years ago I started the company to address what I saw as a gap in the industry which wasn’t being filled by larger or smaller architectural practices. We specialise in regional healthcare projects but we also are involved in community and residential projects. We quite deliberately work across different building types to allow us to always bring a new set of eyes and ideas to well established building types. Our residential work directly informs and helps us with  the design of residential aged care as well as community projects and visa versa. We are one of the few architectural practices which works on high end residential projects and public residential aged and healthcare care projects at the same time.

Although we work everywhere, we focus specifically on regional health projects. Our focus is on bringing best practices experience and evidence-based research to working in large practices on high profile, big budget projects and smaller regional healthcare projects. Having grown up in regiona,l areas we feel we have a greater capacity and empathy for projects outside metro areas.

Why did you take on the Daylesford masterplan project?

We have already had a very successful relationship with Central Highlands Rural Health with our work to almost completely refurbish the Creswick Hospital. After the success of that project, we wanted to continue working with Maree Cuddihy and her team on the Daylesford project.

Growing up in regional areas our team understands that Daylesford is far more than a nice place to visit on the weekend and we understand the meaningfulness and importance of what hospitals represent to a community. Developing a future roadmap  for the development of a hospital in a regional town is a real privilege.

Where are you up to with the Daylesford Hospital project at the moment?

We are just wrapping up the user group consultation process, Following community consultation we will move into the detailed design stage.

What do you do in your spare time?

I have two small children so I have very little free time. Any time I’m not working I’m usually spending time with my family. My wife is a doctor so even when I’m with them I’m probably working through issues with some of our healthcare projects, much to my wife’s annoyance I’m sure.

If you can’t live at home when you are old, what kind of facility would you like to live in?

That’s a great question and one all designers should be asking themselves, residents and staff when they design residential aged care facilities.

My first thought would be anywhere where my wife was, but after long months of lockdown,  I think I’d like to expand that description to  say a facility which allows for my active life to continue and allows me to maintain social connections in a way I see fit  despite my physical condition. I think in my last years I’d like to live  in a setting which is comfortable, nice and connected to high quality external spaces, where my family feel comfortable visiting.

I think that lockdown has shown us that the need for human interaction  and an evolving rich, complex set of experiences is essential to healthy living and we can also empathise that being stuck in a  building makes this harder.

I think that the key is we continue to strive to be empathetic and compassionate in designing healthcare projects. We understand the privilege and responsibility in delivering places of residence where people will live the last years of their life.

Central Highlands Rural Health wishes to engage the community on the development of a roadmap (or Masterplan) for the Daylesford campus. A Community Forum will be held Thursday 25 November at 5:00 pm in the Daylesford Town Hall. RSVP by email emailengagement@chrh.org.au or by calling (03) 5321 6512. For more information, see the flyer below.