Forth Valley Community Care Village

When mentally ill people require constant support their residential needs echo those of any member of the community - a degree of privacy, a feeling of enclosure and access to nature.

The Community Care Village is part of a masterplan for an informal campus in the grounds of Bellsdyke Hospital. It accommodates long-term patients in a crescent of seven houses, each for six people. An open-plan 'family' space with sitting and dining areas constitutes the social heart of each house. The bedrooms, by contrast, are highly personalised spaces, looking out onto trees, where patients can be completely private. The curved form of the building, both in plan and section, and its intimate scale, are part of a deliberate attempt to avoid hard, aggressive forms.

The arrangement of the small dwellings, each with its own front door, around a sunny 'village green', provides a healthier and happier environment than an institutional building with a hostile corridor in the middle. It is protective, allowing supervising staff to move easily from one unit to the next, but it engenders a sense of community that would otherwise be lacking.

Client: Central Scotland Healthcare NHS Trust
Consultants: Ove Arup and Partners, Davis Langdon & Everest , Ove Arup and Partners, HED