Child and Adolescent Mental Health Facility

Client	HSE Mid-Leinster Dublin

The new facility at Cherry Orchard Hospital will provide mental health services for young people, up to the age of 18 years, residing in the catchment area, in an appropriate purpose-built facility.

The brief proposed the amalgamation into one new facility of a number of existing satellite departments that are in a poor state of repair and are remote from the main hospital campus.

The brief comprises three Child and Adolescent Community Team Departments, an Adolescent Day Hospital, a staff training department and administration support services.

The primary ethos required by the brief is to provide an inviting and open community-based building with emphasis on a safe child and adolescent environment. The design gives particular regard to the need for each department to have discreet dedicated entrances in deference to the sensitive nature of such facilities.

The design strategy adopted was to break consciously from any approaches that could have been prompted by existing structures adjacent to the proposed site and to develop instead an independent free-standing, organically-shaped building that would sit in a landscaped park. The ambition is to achieve a unit that very consciously responds to the needs of the end-users. The organic form is combined with an attention to scale, materials and colour to make the facility as welcoming and empathic as possible for children and adolescents with very particular needs and anxieties.