A New Model of Care at Northern Hospital

The design of this acute mental health unit at Northern Hospital reflects a dramatic shift in thinking about the way people experiencing mental illness are treated. A Royal Commission into the state’s mental health system proposed a New Model of Care that is centred around the consumer. It outlined the need for care environments that are supportive, caring, welcoming and safe for people who present to the mental health system in crisis. In this new type of unit, the clinical areas are effectively inverted, from a panopticon-type layout that faces inward and prioritises surveillance, to an outward-facing plan that prioritises connections with the surrounding landscape and clusters bedrooms and living spaces around large internal courtyards. The design was developed through a co-design process alongside clinicians, nurses, stakeholders, and people who have lived experience of mental illness. We continued consultation throughout the design process to inform the planning arrangements, layout and aspect of the clinical spaces. Long views from the shared consumer spaces out to the surrounding environment were preserved from the early internal planning stages of the project. These occur through the courtyards and out of glazed corridors to the east, and through windows at the end of the main patient corridors. These views become a passive method of wayfinding, allowing consumers locate themselves in the surrounding context rather than being lost in an institution. In this way consumers are able to navigate the hospital building, reducing stress and confusion. Reducing consumer cohorts is key to the New Model of Care. In response, we clustered five bedrooms together in three zones from high to low acuity on each level of the building. These cohorts can be further reduced if required for consumer safety. Each consumer zone has a shared living and dining space paired with an external courtyard. Externally, the bedroom zones read as three vertical stacks with chiselled-out sections between them that express the position of the six courtyards inside. By embedding these courtyards deep in the plan, we were able to use the building form as a secure boundary, reducing the need for visible fencing elements and drawing natural light deep into the shared consumer spaces. We worked with the client to place the facility at the front of the hospital campus with a direct sky link to the existing Emergency Department. This position seeks to destigmatise and give visibility to the significance of mental health services in an acute health setting. The building is elevated above a carparking deck to retain site access, valuable carparking and to allow for future infill and expansion. We introduced a permeable screen which skirts the exposed lower levels, giving the building a singular form.