CUSTODIAL FACILITY DESIGN
Women’s facility aims to ‘nurture and rehabilitate’
The Scottish Prison Service has recently partnered with Holmes Miller Architects to design and build a ground-breaking new facility for women in custody in Scotland on its existing Cornton Vale site in Stirling, central Scotland. With custodial learning ‘a new focus’ for the DiMHN, David Gardner, Project director at Holmes Miller, a speaker at next month’s DiMH 2024 conference, reports.
The issues around the housing of women in custody in Scotland, particularly the old HMP Cornton Vale prison in Stirling, have been much publicised. This has formed the basis over the last decade of a requirement to comprehensively re-think how prisons are designed for the female population. Much of the existing accommodation, which was austere in nature and designed around security, control, and technical
restrictions, had been deemed not fit for purpose. The prisons had also been designed based on male characteristics which were inappropriate for female use, in turn having a severe negative impact on the behavioural patterns and mental health of their occupants, who are generally an extremely vulnerable section of society in the UK. Working with Holmes Miller Architects,
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) embarked on an ambitious project to create a world-leading custodial facility for women. This new project places therapeutic and gender-informed design at the forefront, and is a significant departure from traditional custodial design. The new facility, designed to be people-orientated and person- centred, meeting the requirements of 100 occupants, comprises two main accommodation buildings, a dedicated assessment centre, and a central hub and ‘front of house’ entrance building, along with purpose-designed retreat and animal care facilities. Phase 1 was completed and handed over in June 2023, with the remainder to be completed in 2024.
Working closely with the client team – a radical departure from previous facilities From the very beginning, SPS identified a need to completely re-think the design approach for what was then named the Women’s National Facility, along with its associated open Community Custody Unit projects. From the outset there was a requirement for real innovation, creativity, and a departure from traditional custodial design. This, however, had to be balanced with operational, safety, and security requirements. The focus was on a therapeutic, trauma-informed and gender- specific design that supports people through their relationship with its context and service. Leading the development of this initial
Top: Generous landscaping set within the arrival plaza creates a warm, welcoming experience on arrival at the facility. Above: The main building axis, with a series of landscaped zones, is carefully aligned with the local historical features around the site. The staggered accommodation wings provide equal views from the bedrooms, and additional daylight to the living areas.
THE NETWORK | MAY 2024
stage, SPS Architect, Ian Smith, provided strategic brief development working with Holmes Miller and the HMP Cornton Vale user groups. This process, which included motivational talks around thinking differently, was very much focused on finding the optimum solution – without any pre-conceived ideas based on past experience of how the final design solution should be configured. This allowed SPS and ourselves to debate and solutionise every aspect of the evolving brief in detail. The journey was very much a significant change of ethos for all involved. It included
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All photos used courtesy of Holmes Miller
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