Oak and Beech, Harperbury Hospital, Hertfordshire
Winner of a prestigious Building Better Healthcare Award for Best Mental Health Design, this £9.5m building contains a 15-bed Low Secure Unit (Oak) and a 15-bed Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (Beech) sited within the green belt environment of this existing hospital site.
The design was developed in close consultation with service-users and staff who highlighted that connection with nature and access to secure outside space as being extremely important to the therapeutic environment of the completed scheme.
The design responds to these criteria by forming each of the wards around fully enclosed, freely accessible and private landscaped courtyards. The steeply sloping site has been exploited to permit each of the wards to sit at adjacent ground level whilst being linked by a central two-storey section that contains shared therapy and administration accommodation.
Externally, the building relates sensitively to its green-belt setting via extensive timber cladding and a sedum roof. It has an excellent energy rating and CO2 emissions are only 70% of those permissible under tightened building regulations.
Chief Executive of the Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Tom Cahill, described the completed scheme as an ‘outstanding building that sets a quality benchmark for future mental health care developments.’
Client: Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Construction value: £9.5m
Gross internal floor area: 2045m2
Completion: July 2009