INPATIENT CAMHS DESIGN
The bedrooms feature bespoke built-in furniture, including a window seat with movable ottoman to allow for user-defined seating arrangements. Personalisable wall boards allow the occupants to display their own photos and objects, while ensuring a fast changeover for staff between patients.
in which we incorporated movable upholstered seating to enable more natural conversations.
In the dining hall, too, carefully considered seating became a driver for the design. The workshops revealed that the dining hall can be a deeply anxious space for young people suffering from eating disorders: here relatively small design moves like incorporating upholstered seating and defensible space have made a significant difference, and sets the dining environment apart from those in other hospitals.
Knowing that they are there to heal Another conversation with service-users’ parents had a significant impact on the whole look and feel of the CAMHS unit. Before the engagement process, it would be natural to assume that a domestic feel would be appropriate for the inpatients’ unit, to create a space which felt familiar and safe. However, it was stressed to us by a parent that a homely aesthetic would only ‘collude’ with the anorexic mindset that this wasn’t a hospital, and they weren’t really ill. Although the space shouldn’t feel overly clinical or sterile, it was clear that it also shouldn’t feel too much like home; patients should know that they are there to heal. Consequently, we devised a ‘third space’ aesthetic: neither clinical nor domestic, but rather something unique and ‘other’ – comfortable and efficient, but also colourful and distracting. These conversations, among many others, enabled us to develop the brief in collaboration with the wider project team, and ultimately resulted in the extension of the project’s scope. Following the engagement stage, which revealed multiple new priorities, additional funding was raised by the charity to include amendments to the bedrooms, as well as external play equipment.
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Key challenges and solutions As a brand new hospital, the RHCYP obviously had extremely strict infection control standards that our proposals had to meet. All of the materials in our designs, for example, had to be approved by the hospital’s Infection Control team. To ensure that all standards were met, we worked with approved materials and fittings, subverting traditional hospital aesthetics by choosing unconventional finishes for hospital-grade furniture, or using approved materials in unusual ways. For example, to create patchwork ‘rugs’ in the inpatients’ social space, we designed patterns cut from standard sheet linoleum flooring. This approach kept costs down, streamlined approvals and production, and ensured patient safety, while creating an interior environment which is radically different from what we expect clinical spaces to look
like. We’re proud to have demonstrated that with careful design and ongoing dialogue, it is possible to create exciting and unusual spaces within NHS protocols.
Working within a larger design team
When we were commissioned, HLM’s designs for the main hospital were well advanced, but still under development. Any changes to the existing designs had to be incorporated into the work plans of multiple teams. In order to meet the brief’s tight budget, our interventions optimised spaces with minimal structural changes to the existing designs, and ensured maximum impact for every penny. Our schemes were conceived to complement the existing architecture, rather than compete with it, to ensure a cohesive whole.
The wall graphics have been integrated into the overall design scheme, reinforcing the coastal narrative. A large-scale mural in the courtyard garden features a goal and targets for ball games.
JANUARY 2022 | THE NETWORK
©French + Tye
©French + Tye
©French + Tye
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