Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PRINCIPLES OF DESIGN
The World Health Organisation states that, 35.6 million people have dementia
and there are 7.7 million new cases every year. Dementia is one of the major
causes of disability and dependency among older people worldwide.
Although dementia mainly affects older people, it is not a normal part of
ageing. The disease is the healthcare challenge of the 21st century. Our ageing
population means the high incidence of the disease is set to soar.
- The disease costs the economy 23 billion a year
- Over 800,000 people in the United Kingdom affected.
- By 2040 the number affected is expected to double
eople with dementia in general hospitals have worse outcomes in terms of
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length of stay, mortality and institutionalisation.
Planning for the future is needed now to ensure that the right care, support
and environments are available. This includes: effective care settings,
encouraging and supporting independence among those with dementia and
promoting new cost-effective models of service that provide enhanced care.
Dementia is not:
Dementia isnt when you cant find your car keys. We all do that. Its when youre standing
at the door with your keys in your hand and you dont know what they are there for.
ENABLING DESIGN
MAKING IT HAPPEN
Achieving excellent service led design needs an ambitious client, thoughtful briefing
and effective stakeholder engagement. Medical Architecture draws on knowledge,
experience and foresight to enable you to realise your service vision.
Thoughtful Briefing
Understanding your objectives is the first step to developing a comprehensive
project brief. This is an iterative process which requires a methodical approach. We
will:
Listen to you and your project stakeholders.
Gather supporting information, data and surveys.
Record, and classify what we have heard and the information received.
Communicate the project brief clearly and concisely.
At Medical Architecture we formulate an approach to delivering your plans that
responds to the context and is based upon experience and adherence to standards.
We also draw on evidence-based research and a range of relevant guidance prepared
by us for government and specialist housing providers to embed best practice.
Projects are benchmarked against the best international examples healthcare design
ensures world class services are matched by world class new facilities.
Your Business Case must be affordable and calibrated to deliver the best long-term
value whilst providing robust and inspiring healthcare architecture. Our tiered
approach to developing design options ensures best value.
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alue engineering ensures that the budget is being used to deliver an
affordable facility.
Whole life and revenue costs that reflect effective use of workforce,
sustainability, running costs, adaptability, maintenance cycle and end life
costs.
Qualitative benefits in privacy and dignity of patient environment, workplace
quality, ease of wayfinding, safety and security as well as your organisations
brand identity.
Patients representatives.
Clinical staff groups.
Estates management.
External Stakeholders.
INFORMED DESIGN
Right to Left.
Use of daylight and natural
materials in spaces to improve
circulation and promote healthy
lifestyle. Glenside Health Services,
Adelaide
Contemplative spaces with views
of therapeutic gardens. Tyne, Low
Secure Unit, Northgate Hospital,
Morpeth, UK
Integrated artwork providing
wayfinding. Rose Lodge, South
Tyneside, UK
Internal Environment
A therapeutic environment fosters wellness and encourages activity. Daylight reinforces
our circadian rhythms and provides cues to passing time. Ventilation should avoid
draughts but provide fresh air. Both long views with landmarks and activity as well as
short local views offer scope for enjoyable engagement and reflection.
Sensory Design
Dementia reduces the response of all five senses. Sensory design modifies the reactive
nature of the surroundings. Good building acoustics can make the environment
intelligible and calming which is vital for dementia patients. Our team designs to
accommodate degeneration of sight and a changing perception of colours. We use
colour contrast studies to ensure that patient navigation and orientation is made easier.
Tactile materials such as textured wood finishes provide warmth and assurance. Use of
aroma around dining areas is particularly important in stimulating the physiology for
good nutrition.
Healthy Lifestyles
A sense of well-being is underpinned by promoting healthy living. The environment has
a role to play in encouraging activity. Creative circulation routes with alternative choices
promote walking. Multi-use rooms may be used for dance and physical activities. Those
who have very limited mobility are to be encouraged by wheelchair friendly routes and
with wellness guiding design, even those who are bed bound will appreciate access to
balconies and gardens.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
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Located within the Roseberry Park campus, the specially designed Westerdale unit is
divided into two wards for thirty-two Older Adult patients, with separate assessment
and treatment beds for people with dementia and for those with functional mental
health problems. Our design was guided by the sensitive interpretation of the Trusts
brief and service user aspirations to reflect the clinical requirements of a modern mental
health service and workforce.
The unit is located within the 142 bed Adult Acute village setting underpinned by
Value 75m
a strong landscape framework affording seamless integration of gardens and interconnecting outside spaces. Varying sequences of landscape and architecture convey a Status Completed 2010
sense of domesticity and tranquillity, inverting the traditional mental health model. The
design was manipulated to reduce its bulk into recognisably human scaled spaces and
focused upon the individual patient experience, breaking down the accommodation
into a number of houses arranged around large activity garden. This created an
architecture of enclosure without fences to help remove stigma and encourage service
users to partake in activities in shared spaces as they would in the community.
This design concept is combined with a strong landscape and art strategy to provide an
attractive and comprehensible environment one which is easy to navigate and which
will stimulate therapeutic engagement and help support recovery. As patients and staff
move through the campus complex, spaces become intimate, more human and smallscale; passing through the civic spaces of the entrance plaza, and on to the residential
streetscapes of the central shared garden, ending at the private domesticity of the ward
interiors with its private gardens and bedroom views.
The therapeutic benefits of contact with nature is fully utilised where each patient has
close, generous and free access to the outdoors to a variety of sensory experiences. As
soon as a patient opens their bedroom door they get a view of a garden, the corridor
acts as a buffer with built-in window seats where they can relax before entering more
public day spaces.
The Westerdale units layout is arranged for flexibility but accommodating the particular
characteristics of the older adult patient. Bedrooms are clustered around the perimeter
of the ward units, keeping private space away from the day space and public areas.
Challenging Behaviour patients were specifically catered for alongside other dementia
sufferers, with dedicated facilities so that appropriate care can be provided without
disturbing the other patients or disrupting care patterns.
Significant and meaningful engagement with service users and staff occurred to test,
challenge and respond to the emerging design principles to ensure that the provision
was truly representative of their needs. Consultations took place with patients, their
carers and staff across all elements of the conceptual and detail design, thus creating a
real sense of ownership and understanding amongst all the project stakeholders.
Focused features of contemplation in the
landscape. Activity garden in a secure
courtyard. Roseberry Park, Middlesbrough, UK
Awards
RIBA Award 2012
RIBA Award 2012 - Client of the Year
RIBA Northern Network Awards 2011: Gold Award
RIBA Northern Network Awards 2011: Hadrian Award (North East Project of the Year)
Design & Health International Academy Awards 2010: Highly Commended - Mental Health
Design
The new purpose built Dementia Care Campus, located at the Monkwearmouth
Hospital in Sunderland, consolidates the Trusts Dementia Care Services into one
location. The Campus provides 24 new inpatient beds with assessment and treatment
facilities alongside existing refurbished inpatient accommodation. A Day Hospital
provides clinics and session work departments for adults and older people, replacing
existing accommodation which restricted patient mobility and privacy.
Medical Architecture worked alongside the Iris Murdoch Dementia Services
Development Centre at Stirling University, to encapsulate the latest findings in
Dementia-related research.
We wanted to create a spacious, flexible living area where various activities could take place at
the same time. To achieve this, while providing intimate spaces for smaller groups of patients,
we developed a series of bespoke room dividers. These were designed to incorporate special
cabinets to safely display individual artwork, objects of interest, and provide storage, helping
to personalise the space while creating a stimulating patient environment.
BRINGING VALUE
We worked closely with an artist and the end users to create a bespoke interior design that was both
reassuring and stimulating for a sensitive patient group, picking up themes of nature taken from the
nearby Northumbrian countryside. Even the furniture was specially designed, with careful selection
of cleanable fabrics and colours, to help move away from a feeling of institution yet provide the
required functionality of a hospital environment - Ferndene, Children and Young Peoples Centre,
Northumberland, UK
ABOUT US ...
Specialists in the design and planning for Healthcare environments, Medical
Architecture are an award-winning design practice which delivers intelligent
cohesive facilities across the globe. Founded in 1991, our practice focuses
specifically on the Healthcare sector, bridging the gap between policy, vision
and function. Our design ethos is underpinned by research and evaluation of
lessons learnt and the adoption of innovation in construction methods. Our
buildings are flexible, responsive and adaptable to future needs of clinical
standards thus enhancing the care path of patients (and staff efficiency).
With a deep-set understanding of the Healthcare sector and models of care,
we consult and advise professional bodies at early stages of development to
ensure our buildings are truly immersive and relative to the built environment
and the communities they serve.
Operating from offices in London, Newcastle upon Tyne and Sydney, we are
committed to the provision of innovative healthcare buildings that enhance
the delivery of care across a wide range of sectors within the healthcare
spectrum. With an international benchmarking knowledge of recent projects
and continuous exchange of the latest thinking in healthcare environments, in
an established network of international specialists, conferences and industry
forums, we are able to improve outcomes through research and the application
of evidence based design. We are conversant with current international health
building standards and assist in the preparation of technical guidance in the
United Kingdom. Our award-winning projects achieve excellent standards in
design through an informed approach that combines theory and practice.
OUR OFFER
Understanding the needs of the people we design for is critical to the success
of design and delivery of high class care facility. Our approach to every project
is to engage with all stakeholders to bring the absolute needs of end-user to
the forefront of decision making, ensuring that delivery of the facility provides a
high level of care for patients and a sound working environment for clinical staff.
Key to this we provide:
DESIGN LEADERS
We recognise that the implementation and delivery of a successful Dementia
Care facility requires a high level of knowledge and experience, skill and
insight, as well as technical capability, commitment and a pragmatic team to
work alongside stakeholders. Our team of healthcare specialists bring design
flair, know-how and understanding of the steps necessary to gain stakeholder
endorsement, statutory approval and to take the building
through procurement, in delivering a world class facility.
With acute understanding of the challenges faced by the onset and
development of Dementia, our design leaders, Raechal Ferguson and
Lianne Knotts provide high level inspiration and innovation underpinned
by evidence- based research. Lianne has spoken at a number of high profile
industry events regarding her work at Ferndene and, more recently, regarding
her peer review role on the Monkwearmouth Dementia Care Centre project.
Raechal Ferguson
Senior Director
We designed the new hospital to resemble a small village, in order to create an intimate,
reassuring scale for the more vulnerable patients. Inpatient buildings are organised around a
shared garden providing therapeutic landscape-based activities. This has created not only a
place of refuge and healing but a positive focal point for the whole facility.
2012
Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Staff Awards: Service Users and Carers
Involvement - Ferndene
Considerate Contractors Award: Bronze - Ferndene
Constructing Excellence National Awards: Integration and Collaborative
Working - Ferndene
Health Service Journal: Good Corporate Citizenship - Ferndene
INCA Awards, Non-Residential - Ferndene
Building Better Healthcare Awards:
Specialist Services Design - Ferndene
Best Use of the Arts - Ferndene
Best Interior Design - Ferndene
Best Project Team - Ferndene
Constructing Excellence North East Awards:
Integration & Collaborative Working - Ferndene
Client of the Year - Ferndene
Project of the Year - Ferndene
The Legacy Award: Sustainability - Highly Commended, Ferndene
Society of British Interior Design Awards: Best Innovation - Ferndene
RIBA Award: Client of the Year - Roseberry Park
RIBA Award: Roseberry Park
D&H International Academy Awards: International Mental Health Design Ferndene
2011
2010
2009
2008
RIBA National and International Awards: North East England Regional Bamburgh Clinic
2007
2006
2004
2002
1996
1995
www.medicalarchitecture.com
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London EC1V 3RS
United Kingdom
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Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1JE
United Kingdom