Teva Hesse was the lead designer for the recently completed conversion of a former Howdens warehouse into a community mental healthcare hub for the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust. The project was designed, constructed and handed-over during the Covid pandemic within a fast-track programme of 7 months.
Within the un-insulated shell of a former warehouse, with no drainage, water services or mechanical services, our practice worked side-by-side with the NHS client and the contractor to deliver a flagship facility for the provision of mental health services in North London.
The brief for the project was to deliver mental health consultation and treatment rooms on the ground floor with new open-plan, flexible workspaces and meeting rooms on the floor above.
We have placed all the consultation rooms and meeting rooms around the perimeter of the building where there is the most daylight and views out–to make the experience of the space as positive as possible. Our scope included interior design, and we selected a variety of furniture and surfaces to make the environment as comfortable and non-institutional as possible, but all within the limitations of NHS budgets.
The final project introduced flexible office accommodation design that were new to the C&I NHS Trust such as shared workstations, ‘hot-desking’, break-out kitchens for team meetings, bookable meeting rooms and ‘pods’ for impromptu discussions/team working. The result is that the Trust’s administrative staff and various community mental healthcare teams can work out of a flexible hub that is designed to bring teams together in a collaborative environment.
