ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
Main picture: The X-wing shaped wards will enable the natural benefits of the greenfield site to be utilised to their full potential. Inset: A concept sketch of the new 54-bedded inpatient unit.
to create a tranquil and therapeutic healing environment for patients. The campus setting will, over time,
address all the Trust’s inpatient needs, enabling it to respond more effectively to the changing needs of local people. It should also enable the Trust to attract and keep the best staff, as it will become a leading centre for mental health services.
Concept The new building is located at the western end of the site, with the front door prominently positioned at the end of a tree-lined avenue rising up from Mount View Street. The building entrance wraps around a ‘village green’ garden. As you enter the building, you can see through the reception area to the village green beyond, giving transparency and openness to the approach. The green is surrounded by a café, visiting rooms, and shared therapy spaces. Beyond that are the three wards towards the quieter, more private side of the site. The wards themselves are quite unlike
any other in existence in the UK. After assessing and testing a plethora of ward typology precedents with the clinical team and Experts by Experience, the exercise concluded that the ward layouts needed to: l Have excellent lines of sight from a centrally located staff base.
l Cluster bedrooms in three small groups of six.
l Enable quick response times by staff. l Allow for flexibility within the wards to support mixed sex wards if required.
l Ideally allow for ‘swing’ beds between the two working age adult wards.
l Provide pandemic/outbreak capability/ response measures.
l Have staff welfare and changing provision on each ward.
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In response to this brief, we looked at a traditional cruciform layout, and reassembled its constituent components into an X-wing shape. This provided several key advantages of other ward typologies: l No patient bedrooms face onto the ward gardens, ensuring privacy and dignity to all bedrooms.
l All bedroom corridors are single-sided – this ensures that they are filled with natural light.
l Compared with a cruciform ward, the garden areas are notably more spacious.
l Two garden spaces are created – a general ward garden and a dedicated therapy garden for the ward. This is in contrast to one single garden that has to do everything in courtyard ward typologies.
Design team
l Client: Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
l Architect: Gilling Dod Architects. l PSCP: Kier. l Project Manager, Structural & Civils Engineers, Landscape Architects, Sustainability and BREEAM, Ecology, Planning Consultant & Agent, Fire Engineers, Acousticians, Transport Consultants, Vertical Transport, and External Lighting Consulting: WSP.
l Stage 5 MEP: KME. l CDM advisors: Bureau Veritas. l Interior designers: Gilling Dod Architects.
l Quantity Surveyors: WT Partnership (client side), McBains (PSCP side).
l The gardens are predominantly secured by the building form, with just a single fence line to secure the outer garden.
Both the working-age adult wards and the older adult ward follow the same typology principle, but with the older adult ward having slightly larger rooms to accommodate walking/mobility aids.
Key spaces Bedrooms are an individual’s sanctuary, which explains why Combe Valley’s bedrooms have been given extra care and consideration. Expert by Experience and P22 consultation feedback informed the ideal bed position. This is complemented by a half-bay window, angled towards the bed, so that people can look directly out of the window towards trees and wildflower meadows from their bed. The half bay also incorporates a window seat and a desk/ dressing table, ensuring that a patient’s key activities are lit by natural light and have calming views of nature. Finishes around the entrance area of bedrooms differ from the rest of the room to enable it to act as a lobby area between bed zone and en-suite zone. Each ward features an activity room, a
therapy room, and a quiet room. Off ward, patients will have access to a gym, studio, group room, an activities of daily living kitchen, a spiritual room, and art room; the latter will even include a kiln for firing pottery. The first floor hosts the well-equipped
education hub, providing a variety of spaces for training and learning. Central to this is the medical education simulation suite, which provides facilities for, among others, clinical trainees from the University of Sussex. The suite enables simulation for a variety of scenarios, observed
MAY 2024 | THE NETWORK
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