‘Grafted’ into a mature landscape on the fringe of Northumberland’s countryside in Prudhoe, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust’s new Ferndene 40-bedroom residential and day centre integrates children’s mental health and learning disability services for youngsters aged 4-18 for what is reportedly the first time in the UK in a design that ‘engages at different levels with its environment’. The £27 million facility provides assessment and treatment for young people with ‘complex mental health, behavioural, and emotional needs’.
Medical Architecture, as part of the Trust’s ProCure21 partnership with the Laing O’Rourke PSCP, was commissioned to design the new centre, integrating new and existing services previously housed in old accommodation of varying quality dispersed around a large former asylum site.
The architects explained: “The task of integrating a range of patient ages and conflicting needs presented multiple obstacles: sharing amenities while separating vulnerable children from young people with challenging behaviour; providing safe and secure boundaries without a sense of incarceration; creating a resilient yet therapeutic environment, and ensuring adaptability for future change.” A monthly forum with the children developed and reinforced the strong, individual identities of the four ward groups through art, poetry, colour, and wayfinding, ‘telling a story that forms a site-wide narrative, based on woodland themes, that starts in the reception area, and informs a vibrant interior scheme that actively engages with service users, visitors, and staff.’. The young people’s views were expressed to the Project Board via an independent representative.
The building is conceived as a hand with fingers of bedroom accommodation spanning out from a central activity building in the palm. A corridor on one side of each finger provides a view out and natural light in. The positioning of living and day space ‘at the fingertips’ sets up panoramic views over the mature woodland and Northumbrian hills beyond.
An internal ‘pedestrian street’ between the wards and the activities building creates a safe outdoor space for the young people to move between buildings, encouraging a sense of community that divides ‘home’ from the educational, sports, and recreational facilities, and allows the young people to ‘gain a sense of structured activity in a landscaped setting’.
Ferndene is also on track to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating. Roof slates were salvaged from demolished buildings on site and re-used as cladding for the activity building. The Children’s Centre is described as ‘particularly sensitive to its surrounding ecology’, with diverse planting in a wildflower meadow and a sedum nature roof, provision of bird species boxes, and extensive bat roosting space within the building’s loft.
