With its height, whitewashed walls, slate-clad appearance, and rural setting all combining to lend it a homely domestic feel, at first glance the new Rathview Mental Health Facility in Omagh is perhaps not what you would expect.
“In fact,” say its architects, Todd Architects, ‘it would be hard to know it was a healthcare building at all.” Rathview, completed in April this year for the Western Health and Social Care Trust by main contractor, P&K McKaigue, was carefully designed ‘to break down traditional, preconceived ideas of mental health facilities, offering a fresh, residential approach in a peaceful countryside setting’.
Situated in a rural greenfield site on Omagh’s outskirts, the £2.8 million, 1,169 m² facility contains a 12-bed Discharge Unit and a six-bed Recovery Unit, and is designed to increase the range of community-based mental health service available locally.
Project architect, Liam Lennon, said: “Rathview takes its name from a nearby ‘Rath’ or ringfort – an ancient Irish chieftain’s residence dating back to the Iron Age. Our design approach maintains a dialogue with local history, and reflects a contemporary take on the traditional Ulster ‘Clachan’ – a homestead formation in today’s terms.”
Deliberately one storey throughout, Todd’s shallow plan design places all habitable rooms on external walls, facing either directly out to the surrounding countryside, or onto an internal courtyard, maximising natural light and views of a calm external environment.
The medium-stay Discharge Unit focuses on rebuilding residents’ confidence and independence by providing a domestic environment, with autonomous access to their accommodation. Twelve individual, one-person apartments are laid out around a central courtyard, with two activity social spaces and a training kitchen.
The six-bed Recovery Unit offers short-term care, with the en-suite rooms ‘specifically designed to balance privacy with essential observation and access’. Sensitively arranged around a fully enclosed courtyard, the unit includes staff accommodation and communal areas.
Todd’s design uses pitched roof forms with flat-roofed, predominantly glazed, circulation spaces to visually reduce the building’s mass and scale. Liam Lennon said: “This design also creates views ‘to’, ‘from’, and ‘between’, the internal landscaped courtyards and external surroundings. White rendered exteriors contrast against grey slate roofs and wall cladding, with brick and timber feature elements softening against aluminium framed windows. The cedar wood cladding of the internal courtyards offers a warm feel, with glazed infills to encourage natural light into the interiors.”