West London, the atrium of a tall, white building: two dancers rehearse a piece of modern choreography on a stage overlooked by four floors. Above them, giant papier-maché sardines swing on threads secured to a glass ceiling. Below, 30ft bamboo plants frame a sculpture of chrome and trickling water. This isn't a lottery funded arts centre or the head office of a global enterprise. It is the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, the most spectacular in the NHS and where Cherie Booth is expected to give birth.
There is a signed photo of Vanessa Redgrave in the foyer, two vast aquariums by the reception and a pair of glass lift shafts climbing five floors to the skylight. It has been used as a film location for Eyes Wide Shut, the Spice Girls movie, Spiceworld, and Sliding Doors. When a patient ambles around the corner in a frayed towelling dressing gown, the casual visitor expects security guards to rush up and remove him.
There have been reports of a virtual stampede of mums-to-be following the news about Cherie. But the maternity unit was already incredibly popular. In the year the hospital opened, 1993, 1,500 babies were delivered there. By last year, that figure had risen to 4,000. It's been reported that demand is now such that each month around 40 expectant mothers are told they will have to give birth elsewhere. Priority is given to high-risk births - Cherie's age puts her in this category - and local residents.
The main attraction, however, is less the medical care than the environment. Apart from a slight whiff of boiled potatoes on the top floor, it doesn't smell like a hospital and it certainly doesn't look like one. Hang out with the sculptures in the foyer for 10 minutes and you start imagining it would be a nice place to come and eat lunch.
The hospital avoids the traditional NHS experience of fraying furniture and peeling brown paint thanks to a combination of factors, chief among them that its 70 departments and 580 beds were purpose-built from designs by Shepherd Robinson, the firm of architects behind the new Tate Gallery. The concept was to build a hospital that, instead of demoralising patients with dim corridors like something out of The Shining, would give them a sense of space, light and exhilaration. The result is the largest naturally ventilated atrium in the world, bigger than Harrods, bigger than Wembley Stadium even and in atmosphere somewhere between a leisure centre and the Louvre. The hospital is structured like a multi-storey shopping centre, each floor overlooking the central lobby with its exhibition of paintings, sculptures and exotic ferns.
The location also helps. It is on the old site of St Stephen's Hospital in the Fulham Road, deep inside west London's sushi bar territory and catchment area to some of the city's wealthiest residents, Madonna the newest among them. This doesn't qualify it for preferential funding - it scraps for bites of the cake alongside all the other NHS hospitals - but it does give it a decided advantage when it comes to non-NHS fundraising for the extras which make it so special. The Chelsea and Westminster boasts a star-studded list of patrons (some of them west London locals who stand at least an outside chance of one day being admitted), who are only too pleased to support the smart hospital. Lord Attenborough, Anna Ford, Susan Hampshire, Dr Jonathan Miller, Frank Field, Geoffrey Palmer, Dame Maggie Smith, Sue MacGregor, Ned Sherrin, Lord Palumbo, and so it goes on. The Royal Opera House would be hard pressed to display a more illustrious set of supporters.
The net gain of all this is the successful charity run by the hospital to pay for its beautiful installations: the patrons' contacts give clout when it comes to fundraising.
The apparatus behind the hanging sardines and the dance shows is the Hospital Arts project, a slick and business-like operation with three staff. When the hospital opened, three doctors approached the trustees with the idea of making the place a less sterile and alienating place through the use of art.
"The fact that the idea came from doctors made the trustees less suspicious," says Natasha Freedman, the project's performing arts co-ordinator. "Otherwise they might have dismissed it as typically unrealistic artsy interference." Instead, it was given the go-ahead to gather funds for what has become a comprehensive timetable of exhibitions and shows. The Chelsea and Westminster is now like the South Bank with medical services. "The acoustics in here make it like a cathedral," says Freedman. "It isn't just patients who attend the shows, but local residents too. When an orchestra is playing, everyone comes out on to the walkways and looks down. The atmosphere can be amazing. Everything is of first class quality - we don't want to depress patients with a programme of 'arts for sick people'."
Indeed not. The itinerary she and her colleagues have put together over the past years is impressive. Performing on the second floor "stage" (previously a redundant patch of roofing between lift shafts) have been the Royal Ballet School, Pimlico Opera House with renditions of Cosi fan tutte, the Barber of Seville and La Bohème, and a six month residency by the Medici String Quartet, featuring six concerts/workshops on the theme of the Seven Ages of Man. Downstairs in the café - chrome furniture, open plan like a trendy advertising agency - a season of "literary lunch hours" has been running since the summer, with Ned Sherrin, Harriet Walter, Michèle Roberts and AS Byatt no less - all reading from their works. Patricia Hodge narrated excerpts from Peter and the Wolf.
Even if this sounds impossibly west London and pretentious, common sense dictates that the quality of the patient's stay is probably vastly improved by its efforts. And it isn't just a question of money. Unlike the stuffy beige luxury of most private hospitals, the Chelsea and Westminster has a boisterous ethos: it is a place to go for recovery, not defeat. Administrators are trying to prove the positive effects of this by embarking on a two-year research project into patients' recuperation time.
"Of course, if you're in a hospital which has been converted from a Victorian workhouse, you can't emulate an environment like this," says Natasha Freedman. "But neither should the Chelsea and Westminster be looked upon as a luxurious anomaly. The future of newly built hospitals should be set in its image. Arts aren't the main function of a hospital, but the environment can make a bigger contribution than it is currently doing."
Of course she's right. When you are feeling ill, the last thing you need is to be surrounded by bad smells and depressing decor. But the question remains as to whether anywhere outside of SW10 can drum up the charitable donations to pull it off.
