Mental Health Crisis Center
The brief for this project was to design a new typology of social services that combine the functions of a shelter, social work offices, and a mental health clinic with the intention of limiting unproductive visits to emergency rooms and jails.
The program of this proposal was developed with particular attention to the balance between patient privacy and the immense value of community healing. Through a relatively solid exterior, the design focuses on an illuminated and social interior, filled with multiple scales of community space and natural light from clerestories and lightwells.
The first floor guides patient triage and meetings with care professionals in offices, a community kitchen, or short stay “23 hour beds.” The top floor has 18 long stay rooms grouped into pods that create interstitial spaces for gathering and rest. Defying traditional hospital typologies, this upper floor forms a small “village” that encourages patients to group outside their rooms.
The brief for this project was to design a new typology of social services that combine the functions of a shelter, social work offices, and a mental health clinic with the intention of limiting unproductive visits to emergency rooms and jails.
The program of this proposal was developed with particular attention to the balance between patient privacy and the immense value of community healing. Through a relatively solid exterior, the design focuses on an illuminated and social interior, filled with multiple scales of community space and natural light from clerestories and lightwells.
The first floor guides patient triage and meetings with care professionals in offices, a community kitchen, or short stay “23 hour beds.” The top floor has 18 long stay rooms grouped into pods that create interstitial spaces for gathering and rest. Defying traditional hospital typologies, this upper floor forms a small “village” that encourages patients to group outside their rooms.