ESTATE REDEVELOPMENT
reserved for parking, hospital support spaces, and plant rooms. Public-facing services such as retail areas, outpatient facilities, and training / teaching / seminar areas, will be on the ground floor. Inpatient wards will be lifted to the upper levels of the buildings. There are a great many advantages in doing so, including: l Minimising overshadowing or overlooking.
l Increasing privacy from surrounding streets and houses.
l Taking advantage of better views and daylight at upper levels.
l Assisting with the natural ventilation at the top of the buildings.
l Increasing security for Forensic wards.
A ‘legible’ internal circulation The principle of organising a multi-level hospital development on a relatively constrained site is to link all areas with a legible, internal circulation space: a ‘hospital concourse’. Public-facing functions are located off this concourse. The streets have been designed with daylight from above and, where possible, views out, to aid with orientation and wayfinding. In this way staff, visitors, and service-users can move through large hospital buildings without the need for excessive signage and internal corridors.
The ultimate challenge was to design mental health inpatient buildings, including medium secure services, that sit comfortably and safely within a mixed-use development, including new homes, a public park, and public retail and leisure facilities. We believe that this has been achieved, with careful planning, making use of the building external envelope as the basis of the privacy and containment required for a successful mental health inpatient environment. This also required us to meet the challenge of creating gardens within the building’s curtilage – gardens that are not just hard courtyards, but proper seasonal gardens to provide high quality, free access to the outdoors, even for patients detained under the Mental Health Act.
Where staff feel valued Improving facilities for staff is not an optional ‘nice to have’. In order to attract and retain a dedicated and well-motivated staff, hospital facilities need to cater to personal needs, as well as improved working environments. The quality of work within any institution is directly influenced by the morale and training of its staff. To that end the scheme proposals have incorporated the following into the design: l With very few exceptions, all staff workrooms have natural daylight and views to landscaped spaces.
l Staff enter the facilities through daylit atriums that bring hospital staff, carers, and service-users together in a pleasant, shared environment.
l Shared staff break rooms are provided in convenient locations, with tea kitchens and comfortable furniture.
20 The Non-Forensic Building.
l Central shower and changing facilities with lockers are provided on site.
l A dedicated multi-faith room is provided on site for staff, carers, and service-users with ward leave.
l Areas for external contractors to provide a restaurant or café within the Springfield site.
And so, in summary, what should a new mental health facility look like? Our objective has been to make a quiet, simple architecture. The new Springfield University Hospital buildings are large in plan, but split into sections horizontally or vertically where possible. The materiality of brick facades will echo the surrounding residential neighbourhood. In height and scale, they are designed to fit comfortably within the masterplan. We have endeavoured to make buildings that are modest, but surrounded by and filled with high quality landscape; buildings that are containers for gardens, and admit as much daylight and fresh air as possible.
Postscript
The ideas and opinions expressed within this article are those of the author alone. I do not speak for, or mean to imply, that
Teva Hesse
Teva Hesse MArch, MAA, AIA has over 30 years’ experience as the lead architect on award-winning projects in the US, Scandinavia and the UK. He was educated in the US, and was awarded a prestigious Regent’s Fellowship from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA degree from Princeton University, with high honours in Architecture. He has been the design team leader for several major London projects, such as the Darwin Centre II at the Natural History Museum, the Sammy Ofer Wing at the National Maritime Museum, and the Greenwich Low Carbon Energy Centre.
For the past 20 years, he has worked with C.F. Møller’s healthcare design division, which is one of the largest healthcare design groups in Scandinavia. He began working with the South West London and St George’s Mental Health NHS Trust in 2012, and has led the design team responsible for the SOC, OBC, FBC, and construction design stages of the Estates Modernisation Program for the Trust. He has led the briefing and design process with Trust clinical staff, as well as numerous service-user and carer forums.
OCTOBER 2020 | THE NETWORK
I represent the views of any other party or organisation, in particular those of the SWLSTG Trust. My outlook on mental health design owes a huge debt of gratitude to the vision of people like Andrew Simpson and his colleagues in the Trust; the great majority of whom, including Andrew, have moved on to other positions. In recent years Matthew Neal and Bruce Duncan have picked up the mantle of the project, and have succeeded in securing the complex development agreement that has made the project a reality. Mention and thanks go also to David Bradley, the Trust’s previous Chief Executive, and Vanessa Ford, the current Acting Chief Executive, who have supported and guided the Estates Modernisation Programme through the numerous hurdles that were encountered along the way.
In December 2019 the SWLSTG Trust signed a contract with master developer STEP (a 50:50 joint venture between Sir Robert McAlpine Capital Ventures and Kajima Partnerships). The detailed design, procurement, and construction, of the Springfield University Hospitals is now under the management of STEP’s delivery partner, Sir Robert McAlpine, and is scheduled for completion in 2022.
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©C.F. Møller
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