Woodland View, a £46 million adult acute mental health and community facility in Irvine in Ayrshire, has opened its doors to service-users.
The 206-bed new-build hospital, designed by IBI Group, and constructed by Balfour Beatty, will deliver adult inpatient and outpatient mental health services including rehabilitation, continuing care, addictions, forensics, and intensive psychiatric care. It will also provide organic and functional services for elderly mental health – specifically dementia care – and incorporates research from the Dementia Services Development Centre at Stirling University. Supportive design features include corridor seating areas overlooking landscaped gardens, ‘wander loops’, dementia-friendly signage, and a considered colour, artwork, and wayfinding strategy to help trigger service-user memories.
Planned around service-user and staff wellbeing, the building is described by IBI as ‘safe, spacious, and sustainable’. The architects said: “Full of natural light, the design promotes excellent observation inside and out, offers gender-flexible wards that maintain privacy and dignity, and encompasses landscaped gardens that promote exercise, rehabilitation, and recovery.”