Brainkind Neurological Centre, York

Nominee Information

Jefferson Sheard Architects were commissioned by HBD and Brainkind (formerly The Disabilities Trust) to deliver a £23.8m Neurological Centre for the treatment and rehabilitation of patients requiring specialist acquired brain injury and mental health care in York.
The development relocates York House, providing a new state of the art facility on the former Terry’s Chocolate factory site, surrounded by Grade II listed buildings, York Racecourse and located within the Bishopthorpe conservation area.

The service meets the complex operational needs of Brainkind and maintains its 20-year presence in York, retaining 40 patient beds and 145 healthcare jobs in the city. The 54,806 sq. ft. centre provides facilities across four wards, plus four assessment apartments, alongside communal courtyards/terraces (at first floor) and therapeutic gardens designed to aid recovery and wellbeing.
At its core this facility improves people’s lives. The driving concept behind the design was building function whilst promoting wellbeing of staff, those being supported, their families and visitors. Each area has a specific use, the wards are almost identical bringing familiarity and reducing stress to those who move around the building. The form of the building is wholly derived from the internal function whilst externally the design is sympathetic to its surroundings and is far from the connotations of being an ‘institution’. User experience was a key driver, with large amounts of input from stakeholders, the design team embraced ‘how’ the building should be experienced at a granular level – with particular emphasis on tactile elements, for example larger diameter ironmongery for those with limited motor skills, fully accessible FF&E (wider switches etc.) and colour schemes suitable for those with different illnesses.

The new building is highly sustainable, designed to EPC A and BREEAM Excellent standard with flexibility to embrace new low carbon technology. It limits embedded and operational carbon, with emissions expected to be 29% lower than the national building target emission rate. Clean, renewable energy is generated via PV panels and filtered fresh air is provided via high-efficiency heat recovery ventilation. Further sustainable and bio-diversity elements include wildflower and sensory gardens, electric vehicle charging, bee hotels, bird and bat boxes and a large expanse of sedum roof.

We identified a solution bringing independence to bed bound patients, exploring how we could design the building to assist in these challenges and spawned the idea of how smart-home technology could be used in the clinical environment. Following investigations into its viability in this setting, we discovered that Amazon had successfully trialled voice activation in the US but it wasn’t available in the UK, nor had it gone through the regulatory hoops.
We enlisted the help of Amazon’s Alexa team to deliver the first of its kind building in the UK with voice activation for bed-bound patients, giving them the independence to control their own environment (lighting, ventilation, curtains and their TV’s), reducing reliance on staff whilst promoting their rehabilitation. This was challenging for the team but through a truly collaborative effort between designers, specialists, clinicians, and suppliers it proved successful.