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Studio 4 completes new NHS adolescent treatment centre
Architectural practice Studio 4 has designed new and much-improved facilities for Simmons House, a clinical unit treating teenagers with complex emotional and mental health problems
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The unit occupies a corner of the grounds of a large psychiatric hospital site, St. Luke's Woodside in Muswell Hill, London. The new 2-storey building contains consulting and therapy rooms, teaching spaces and staff offices. It also provides the main entrance to the facility, with reception and waiting areas to receive day-patients, members of patients' families and visitors.
A decision was made early on during the briefing process to retain the existing building. Although not of significant architectural merit, it was considered important to the psychological well-being of the occupants - staff and patients alike - to keep the structure as a solid representation of "home". This is where the young people live, play, eat and sleep for the six to 12 months that they are resident and undergoing treatment. The only noteworthy feature of the old house was its copper dome, which had once housed an amateur astronomer's observatory. The dome has been restored and now provides the hemispherical space for a "chill-out room" for resident adolescents.
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The new building wraps around the garden to form a courtyard, defined on its north side by the old building, which stands on a higher elevation. This courtyard configuration creates a protective environment, important to the users of the building, for whom issues of physical and personal safety are a priority. Staff and patients were keen to describe the new building as "an embracing arm"; comforting and caring, but not so enclosing to be stifling. Large windows to the new facades provide visual links from one area to another, creating a sense of transparency and connectedness throughout the building, from one space to another.
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The planners were mindful that the hospital was located in a conservation area and that several of the other buildings on the site were listed locally as having special architectural or historic interest. The location of the new building caused some concern as it was forward of the line of existing buildings on Woodfield Avenue. Respecting this sensitivity, the massing of the upper level has been eroded to decrease its bulk and to create a structure compositionally sympathetic to the mature trees and buildings around it. The timber-clad external walls at this level serve further to harmonise the building with its woodland setting, while the grey-brick walls at ground floor level signal robustness and solidity, properties important for a building used by this patient group.
All images courtesy of Paul Freeman
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