FEATURE ARTICLES

Andrew Arnold, an award-winning architect, and director at Gilling Dod Architects, explains how – as he puts it – designing ‘productive and appropriate environments’ for service-users with learning disabilities and/or Autism ASD, ‘requires a bit of a reset in terms of design approach’. He illustrates some of the key features and elements he believes are key when designing such spaces optimally with a look at the practice’s recent design of two modern inpatient LD facilities, one complete and the other under construction.

Alice Green, Associate Principal, Architecture and Urbanism, Mental Health, at Arcadis, argues that not enough thought has been given to the design and feel of what are known as ‘Places of Safety’ to date, with some patients starting what could be a lengthy inpatient stay in dreary, intimidating, and institutional admission and assessment spaces. She considers how an ‘ideal’ such environment might look through Arcadis’s own Halcyon ‘concept’ Place of Safety.

Stephen Watson, Principal, Architecture, at Hassell, discusses the thinking and feedback that informed the design of the 64-bedded Acute Mental Health Unit in Ipswich, Queensland, in Australia, which was Highly Commended in the Project of the Year – New Build International category at the 2024 Design in Mental Health Awards in June. The project delivers the first stage of an ambitious 15-year masterplan to redevelop and expand the Ipswich Hospital campus.

Kingsway Group, the anti-ligature door system specialist, has had a particularly busy last two years, launching a number of significant new products, and moving to a considerably larger 32,000 ft2 purpose-built office and production facility. A collaboration of industry partners including the company has meanwhile worked with the service-users, experts-by-experience, and architects, to lead the development of a new ‘co-production’ CAMHS bedroom. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, met up with head of Marketing, Mark Childs, to find out more.

Rachelle McDade, director of Healthcare Planning at Currie & Brown, Chris Roberts, associate director, David Morley Architects, and Evelien van Veen, a partner at Woonwerk Architecten, explore how – against the backdrop of a rise in mental ill health, ‘active design can have a significant positive impact on our communities, and offer the potential to help support our mental health crisis’.

On the second day of June’s Design in Mental Health 2024 conference in Manchester, Dolly Sen – an artist, author, and activist who uses her lived experience ‘to challenge, poke fun at, and interrogate’ the mental health system – spoke about her experiences of mental healthcare, how mental healthcare settings could be improved, and the importance of input from service-users in the design, creation, and upgrading of such spaces. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

One of the highlights of June’s Design in Mental Health 2024 event in Manchester was an early evening drinks reception and awards ceremony at Manchester Central at the end of the conference and exhibition’s first day. A sizeable gathering of visitors, exhibitor representatives, and personnel from the organisations that had entered this year’s awards joined their peers to celebrate innovation, hard work, imaginative design, teamwork, and achievement, as they saw 13 DiMH 2024 Awards presented. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Developed around the concept of a ‘village campus’, Sycamore is a new medium secure facility at the heart of the £60 m redevelopment of Northgate Hospital in Morpeth, Northumberland, which provides a wide variety of indoor and outdoor settings for relaxation and activity, relieving boredom, and addressing the risk of challenging behaviours and poor physical health. Paul Yeomans, director at Medical Architecture, reports.

Safehinge Primera’s new radar patient safety aid designed for bedrooms and bathrooms, with no blindspots, aims to help save lives and improve the quality of care in mental health. Philip Ross, the company’s CEO, explains the background to, and thinking behind, the co-production and development of what its dubs ‘the first and only ethical patient safety aid’ – Project X.

Robin Graham, an architect at Gilling Dod Architects, who oversees many of the practice’s flagship mental health projects, reports on its design of a new 54-bedded adult and older adult inpatient facility currently under construction for Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in an undulating hillside setting near Bexhill in East Sussex. ‘True co-production’ has, he explains, had a key role.

A webinar held in mid-April focused on the importance of the DiMHN and BRE’s Informed Choices testing standard as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of a range of products used in mental healthcare settings, and highlighted some of the considerable potential benefits for users. The Network reports.

Nafeesa Arshad, Digital Art School Producer, and Haley Moyse Fenning, Head of Impact, at Hospital Rooms, discuss the intersection of mental healthcare and art. They highlight some of the charity’s current art installations, ‘the transformative impact of integrating creativity in mental healthcare facilities’, and the impact of the Hospital Rooms Digital Art School initiative, now re-launching, on bringing creative intervention to mental health service-users.

The Scottish Prison Service has recently partnered with Holmes Miller Architects to design and build a ground-breaking new facility for women in custody in Scotland on its existing Cornton Vale site in Stirling, central Scotland. With custodial learning ‘a new focus’ for the DiMHN, David Gardner, Project director at Holmes Miller, a speaker at next month’s DiMH 2024 conference, reports.

With a renewed focus on co-production and inclusion in mental health, Hannah Chamberlain recently met up with Day Two keynote presenter* at next month’s DiMH 2024 conference, Dolly Sen – an artist, author, and activist, who uses her lived experience ‘to challenge, poke fun at, and interrogate’ the mental health system. The DiMHN CEO reports on an interesting discussion.

Located at Brooklands Hospital in Solihull, the Onyx Unit is a new, purpose-built, seven-bedded facility to support person-centred clinical assessments and interventions for patients with autism in a low secure setting.

Social value is now an essential requirement for construction businesses to make a positive impact in society, property and construction company, EDGE, says.

The Global head of Products at Pineapple Contracts, which designs and manufactures furniture for challenging environments, explains how a request from a Trust experiencing damage to its dining room furniture led it to develop its rotationally moulded Ryno range.

Two US architects explain how, having both experienced mental health challenges, they were ‘drawn to sketching as a designer’s preferred medium for defining problems and driving solutions with pen and paper’.

Mark Stefan, director of landscape architecture and planning practice, Design with Nature, outlines the principal characteristics of the Contemplative Landscape Model which forms the core of the book, Neuroscience for Designing Green Spaces

Nationwide Children’s has built the US’s largest freestanding, full-service psychiatric facility on its children’s hospital campus in Columbus, Ohio.