To make the Upper Maudlin Street building look more appealing to patients and visitors, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust is considering to overhaul its facade as part of £80 million ($12.05 billion) redevelopment of the hospital. A new ward block is also being built behind the hospital along with a helipad and new entrance.

The six designs will be shortlisted to no more than three designs after public consultation, post which, they will be deliberated to establish cost and other factors before a final decision is made by the UHBristol board in July 2013. The selected artist will get a chance to work with CODA Architects, which are the lead designers for the redevelopment.

As reported in The Post, the six designs have come from varied places such as New York, Madrid and Stockholm.

French artist Daniel Buren has proposed a vibrant design which could be created using coloured awnings, blind shutters or glass. The artist’s aim was to “give a large visibility, a coloured vivifying vibration and if possible a movable aspect of the full work, playing with light, colour and transparency,” reports The Post.

Local Bristol artist Luke Jerram has proposed a facade inspired by rippling water in the city’s docks. Working in collaboration with multidisclipinary design practice Arup, Jerram’s design features curving metal fins to create waves which are then combined with tiles of different sizes to showcase the differently sized windows of the current BRI facade.

Madrid architects Nieto Sobejano have taken the original Queen’s Building facade’s “vertical rhythm” as a starting point for their design, reports The Post. The design involves re-cladding the building and creating a small open garden to “redefine the public realm” and provide a new sense of a welcoming and non-threatening environment.

Stockholm architects Tham and Videgard have proposed a vertical garden for the hospital’s facade. Their idea is to create glass rooms like large window boxes with greenery on their roofs to “shape a new character that engages better with people passing by.”

London artist Antoni Malinowski has proposed using coloured panels to enhance the Queen’s Building’s concrete fins. He has retained the best aspects of the current facade, and has proposed repairing and cleaning concrete and replacing the decayed panels with coloured glass.

New York design office SO-IL has proposed creation of an airy translucent “light-filled cocoon” for the Queen’s Building. The design will involve stretching an economical weather-barrier over the existing panels on the outside of the building with a membrane in front of it to create a new facade.

University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust is using £2.2 million ($3.3 million) from the BRI redevelopment budget to transform the front of the Queen’s Building. The Queen’s Building on Upper Maudlin Street was once voted one of the ugliest in Bristol.