Title: A Haven for Hope
Client/Project:
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, College Hill Behavioral Health Center
Intro:
A leader in pediatric health expands mental health services for children and adolescents with a building designed to inspire hope and healing.
Story:
Modern life bombards us with stressors. Coping with them can be particularly hard for children and adolescents, especially those with pre-existing behavioral health issues. When kids and teens need services to help manage a mental illness or life crisis, they need a supportive behavioral health setting.
We worked with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to re-think the collection of therapeutic settings known as milieu. These are the spaces where patients will spend most of their time, participating in group therapy, guided activities, free choice time, and other therapies. The building’s design was influenced by the location and variety of milieu on the units and their role as shared resources and destinations. The design emphasizes meaningful environments that mimic moving through one’s day, like changing classes at school. Spaces incorporate positive distractions and allow for different behaviors—such as pacing, rocking, or self-expression; built in benches and nooks allow patients to comfortably occupy a room’s edges. The new building will also feature a greater variety of shared spaces—including the Family Resource Center and the café—to allow more opportunities for families to support their child or adolescent during treatment.
In addition to outpatient services, private, in-patient rooms are grouped in “sleeping wings” for each unit and can be closed off during the day as patients engage with a variety of therapies.
Connecting to nature is an important aspect of any healthcare environment. The new building will have a softness to it— materials and forms that evoke a sense of nature, rounded edges, ample sunlight, and views of the landscape are used to encourage visitors to linger and find a haven for hope and healing.
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