See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/285523292

ARCHITECTURE FOR COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH FACILITIES: NEW MODEL

FOR PLANNING, DESIGN AND EVALUATION

Conference Paper · October 2014

CITATIONS READS

0 144

1 author:

Evangelia Chrysikou
University College London
115 PUBLICATIONS   116 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Hospital Wayfinding View project

‘The social invisibility of mental health facilities: Raising awareness on social exclusion in urban environments through artwork’ View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Evangelia Chrysikou on 02 December 2015.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 TITLE:
ARCHITECTURE FOR COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH FACILITIES:
NEW MODEL FOR PLANNING, DESIGN AND EVALUATION.
AUTHORS:

E. Chrysikou1
1
Architect -Medical Planner, SynΤhesis Architects London-Athens,

ABSTRACT:

Background and Aim:

The shift of mentally ill people from psychiatric hospitals to the community posed a challenge for the designers of
healthcare facilities. The lack of pre-existing references and experience on behalf of all stakeholders on these new
facilities transferred the challenge to architects. The latter, responded with plans indicating experimentation and
lack of knowledge. Yet, at a later stage, architects in order to design facilities for mentally ill people, borrowed
typologies from neighboring disciples such as learning disabilities. Yet, those borrows presented problems. The
research questioned the prevailing model of designing mental health facilities, i.e., normalization theory as
borrowed from the field of learning difficulties.

Methods:

An empirical, synchronous and comparative study on the accommodation for mentally ill people at acute, or at
early recovery stage took place in the UK and France. It questioned normalization theory as a linear loan that could
not cover the needs of mental healthcare. The physical locus of the research has been the Community Mental
Health Center (UK) and the Foyer de Post Cure (France). Data were collected and triangulated from 10 facilities via
architectural auditing of the buildings, the development of a detailed checklist and interviews of 65 residents and
50 staff members.

Results:

This research indicated the ineffectiveness of normalisation theory as well as non-evidence based architectural
experimentation to address the specific needs of mentally ill people. The performance of the cases study buildings
according to users --staff and patients-- and the architectural auditing, increased when there had been involved an
interdisciplinary team of all stake holders, including staff and client representatives, at the early stages of the
projects. Also, the research resulted in a fit for purpose model for viewing the design of mental health care
facilities. That model is named the SCP model from the acronyms of the main design issues -safety and security,
competence and personalization and choice. It is a three dimensional, sensitive model that analyses buildings by
the position they take in the cubic space that is defined by those parameters.

Conclusions:

The model could serve for the planning and the design of new community based facilities such as Community
Mental Health Centers as well as the evaluation existing ones. As it is a product of a comparative study, between
two very different contexts, and results were juxtaposed through triangulation, the model presents flexibility. Also,
despite the fact that the model itself is theoretical, the checklist and questionnaires that served the research can
be adjustable to cover different contexts and building types, creating a web of possible applications. The research
did not examine the social implications of the spatial configuration of facilities for the mentally ill, which could be
the ground for further research in the future.

View publication stats