PROJECT REPORT: HEALTHCARE BUILDINGS
BUILDING PROJECTS
BLOSSOM COURT, ST ANN’S HOSPITAL NORTH LONDON
Environmental health
A mental health building by Medical Architecture in north London took a simple, ‘first-principles’ design approach to providing access to external space and daylit interiors, as well as greater independence and wellness for users. James Parker reports
lossom Court is a new acute mental health inpatient facility at St Ann’s Hospital, north London, which has been designed by Medical Architecture for Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust as a ‘therapeutic environment.’ That primarily means giving patients a variety of good quality indoor and outdoor space, to promote wellbeing and recovery, but also to improve the experience for staff.
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The 74-bed facility comprises three adult acute wards and an eating disorders ward, tackling a different range of user needs. Shared accommodation includes visiting space, staff rest areas, and a multi-faith room. The building, opened in summer 2020, is part of a wider development of the site masterplanned by Medical Architecture, to create a cohesive, ‘people-focused’ healthcare campus.
Site context
The context of this scheme is familiar from many similar NHS projects, with the site having been ‘rationalised’ over many years, with some services moved to other locations. So much so, that by the project’s inception, almost half of the buildings were vacant. However, at the same time, maintaining this surplus estate was diverting funds away from healthcare. The Care Quality Commission reported on the trust’s existing 1930s-built inpatient facilities, finding them outdated and inappropriate. The existing provision was lacking in several ways, explains project architect at Medical Architecture, Ruairi Reeves: “Corridors had no views out and there was no meaningful outdoor space. This
ADF JANUARY 2022
created very internalised space; not good for anyone’s mental health.” He adds: “Wards on the upper storey were isolated from gardens on the ground floor, and gardens outside bedrooms on the ground floor meant these bedrooms had little sense of privacy.” The trust sold its surplus land to the Mayor of London to be redeveloped for housing, to fund a widespread improvement in the healthcare facilities. With at least half of the new homes being designated as affordable, including dedicated units for key workers that staff might use, the resulting development will be an important way of serving local housing demand. Reeves explains how the practice had worked with the trust on a design for a smaller inpatient building as part of a previous ‘consolidation’ of the site, but this never got off the ground. “The project was dormant for a number of years. During this time, we invested some of own time to develop a ‘what-if?’ sketch design to provide a vision for the consolidated hospital and prompt a conversation with key stakeholders.” The project was finally relaunched in 2017, and the architects were appointed through the NHS Procure22 framework as part of the team of the Principal Supply Chain Partner, Integrated Health Projects – a joint venture between contractors Sir Robert McAlpine and Vinci. The architects report that a member of the clinical team commented early on that patients “commonly left mental health wards in worse physical health than when they arrived.” A key driver of this project therefore was to support the physical as well as mental wellbeing of users where possible, throughout the scheme.
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Photography © Tim Crocker
Providing easy access to good quality outdoor space was one of the architects’ fundamental design principles
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