DESIGN & ARCHITECTURE
Pears Maudsley Centre to ‘put young people first’
David Bradley, CEO of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, explains the design principles behind the Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People, set to open in London in 2023. The project’s architects, IBI Group, say they have used ‘innovative design’, developed in consultation with service-users, to create ‘a green, open, and therapeutic environment’. The project partners say the facility will ‘revolutionise and de-stigmatise mental healthcare for young people’.
When the Pears Maudsley Centre for Children and Young People in Denmark Hill opens its doors in the autumn of next year, it will be the realisation of a long-standing ambition and dream. All those who work in or use Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust know just how much it will mean to finally have a state-of-the-art space designed specifically with young people’s mental health in mind. It is estimated that as many as one in six children suffer from mental health conditions, and that half of the mental health issues experienced by adults begin before the age of 15. This is an ever-growing issue, and one that requires specialist care and research. Dedicated facilities like the Pears Maudsley Centre will allow us to bring expert care and research together under one roof, allowing our globally recognised specialists to share their knowledge and experience with one another, and constantly refine their practices. Such facilities also present us with the opportunity to de-stigmatise the process of accessing mental health
A rendered image of the new Pears Maudsley Centre.
services, removing one of the main barriers that prevent young people from seeking help.
Design has played a key role in our efforts to do this. The goal of creating a
welcoming, comforting, and therapeutic environment that meets the specific and variable needs of young people lies at the core of the Centre’s design ethos. The result is a building that represents the future of the Trust – well-integrated with its surroundings and the local community, at the cutting edge of mental healthcare provision and research, and, soon enough, open to all young people in need of care and support.
The Trust says some of the buildings on the Maudsley Hospital campus ‘no longer meet the needs of modern healthcare practices’.
THE NETWORK | NOVEMBER 2022
Reimagining Maudsley Hospital The existing Maudsley Hospital is an impressive building with a fascinating history. When it first opened its doors in 1915, it represented a departure from the conventional design of mental health facilities, with its red-brick and Portland stone exterior bearing a closer resemblance to general hospitals and town halls than the asylums of old. This architectural approach mirrored the modern vision of its founder, Henry Maudsley, to unite research, teaching, and training with clinical practice in one facility, through which the Hospital’s Medical School helped to formalise psychiatry as a branch of medicine.
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South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
Courtesy of IBI Group
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