ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN
that nature and landscape were to be key areas for mental wellbeing. The architectural and landscape designs work in unison, and the building is orientated to give all areas fantastic, yet controlled views. The use of a walled garden helps de-escalate the arrival experience, and the central courtyard provides a safe, calming, controlled, and private outdoor environment, while the south-facing terrace looks out over the valley/links to the nature trail. The site abuts the Trust’s existing horticulture hub/therapy gardens, and this has been woven into the landscape masterplan.
Look and feel The massing design is intentionally ambiguous, and defies categorising. ‘Not a hospital’. Forms and materials echo an agricultural style, and sit sympathetically on the horizon, and are viewed across the valley. All are simple, of low visual clutter, and reassuringly familiar, playing into the whole design ethos and approach, which targets neurodiversity and person-centred design. As for the interior design, and alongside
tailored service-user engagement sessions, the project tapped into work done on the Co-Production CAMHS bedroom Collaboration Project (see also pages 11- 15), an R+D project undertaken alongside several prominent manufacturers, where we engaged with service-users, providers, and experts by experience around ASD and LD, including the Caudwell Children’s Charity (Autism) and its ‘Build your perfect bedroom’ project. Engagement/workshops with young people, families, and carers facilitated at the charity’s annual family fun-day helped us lock in key design themes, and these fed into our ID (interior design) workshops with service-users back in Lancashire. Among elements particularly focused on were detailing, frameless windows, managed views, tactile materials, personalisation, and sensory design. The design is Net Zero carbon, fully electric, and tracking BREAM Excellent, with the scheme embracing Modern Methods of Construction principles. The environmental design is driven by LD- specific criteria and sensory triggers. Key features include a new PV-solar farm, use of renewables, localised air source cooling
Andrew Arnold
Andrew Arnold is an award-winning architect, and director at Gilling Dod Architects – which has, over the last 25 years, established itself as a major player in UK healthcare design. The practice said: “It is in the field of mental health design, however, where Andrew has excelled, with acclaimed projects completed for a broad range of service-user groups and clients nationwide. He heads up a vastly experienced team at Gilling Dod, with first-hand knowledge of the specialisms found in mental health design.”
‘A combination of in-depth knowledge of the issues surrounding modern mental health services, an innovative design approach, and a passion for the subject matter’, has seen Andrew lead the design on some of the practice’s most iconic and award-winning recent mental health schemes, including Red Kite View, Inspire CAMHS, the Broadmoor High Secure mental health hospital, Hartley Hospital, and Aspen Wood LSU. He is also the director in charge on the £105 m North View AMHU project in North Manchester, and leading on Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s Mental Health Digital Research and Innovation Centre (MHDRIC) in Maghull.
32 NOVEMBER 2024 | THE NETWORK
The architects say the massing design for Water Meadow View is ‘intentionally ambiguous, and defies categorising’.
and ventilation heat recovery, intelligent BMS controls, blue-green infrastructure, and daylight maximisation. Based around an innovative and ambitious brief/client, cross-sector user engagement and shared learnings, a commitment to quality design over quantity, and an approach of advocating bespoke and quality inpatient settings in the heart of the community, we feel Water Meadow View is an ideal candidate for the Design in Mental Health Project of the Year – Future design Award.
Current status Work on the new facility has just started on site, and is being delivered by IHP under the ProCure23 framework. The 15-month build involves significant groundworks, and environmental and landscape interventions, but has been universally embraced by the local community and the local planning authority. A major part of the design process was harnessing lessons learned and best practice from the Aspen Wood project – a huge benefit in terms of detail application on the scheme – ranging from fire-stopping details and MEP installation best practice, to bedroom furniture design and even brick detailing. The Trust intends to use the new-build as a blueprint for its subsequent future inpatient units, and when completed, the new facility will sit seamlessly in a sustainable, mixed use, ‘healthy neighbourhood’.
As the need for more tailored,
productive, and supportive mental health environments grows, the pressure on new facilities to deliver true ‘person-centred’ designs follows suit. This involves a bit of a design re-set in terms of approach and delivery, with co-production, clinical understanding, and challenge at its heart. The stripping back of the design brief, and rebuilding around service-users’ core needs, are fundamental to what we do as designers, and from experience has been a huge part of our work on our LD projects. Alongside established pathway-specific exemplars for Dementia, CAMHS, Perinatal and Autism, Learning Disabilities can now be added to the list. The increasing demand for Trauma-informed care, Crisis care services, Complex needs and Neurodiversity, means ‘LD-friendly design’ is more relevant today than ever, with a lot of the innovation, traits, and strategies, eminently transferable across the sector. Neurodiversity is a fast becoming a
society-wide driver in modern healthcare settings, and way beyond the constraints of mental healthcare services, further fuelling this relevance. Against this backdrop, with this level of focus and attention to the sensory environment, human response, and the complex needs of service-users, LD design could lead the way in moving the architectural ‘dial’, and inform the ambition for the mental health inpatient care settings of the future. n
Courtesy of Gilling Dod Architects
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