Ward Development Project

Shenley Hospital was a large psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of North London.
It was undergoing considerable modification as a result of changes in medical
practice. As part of these changes attention was turned to providing better facilities
for that part of the patient population that it was assumed would continue ~o need
continuous in-patient care, especially its psychogeriatric population.
It had a large psychogeriatric population housed in wards that had been designed
for quite other purposes early in the century. The clinical psychologists who
worked there recognised the problems of these wards and commissioned me to
carry out studies that would lead to design proposals. It happened to be a year when
we only had four students on the MSc in Environmental Psychology at Surrey so
the project became the focus for their year's study. .
As a result of the various projects we were able to make design proposals for
how the wards could be redesigned, perhaps the first and only time that
psychologists have produced detailed design recommendations without any
architectural intervention. The recommendations, of course, also included proposals
on the management of the ward, which is virtually unknown in strictly design
schemes.