Placemaker: Translucent and Tactile
 Winner of the Health Category at the 2010 World Architecture Awards, the BVN Architecture-designed Youth Mental Health Building at the Brain and Mind Research Institute (BMRI) in Sydney, Australia provides a light-filled, tactile environment for mental health patients, which also manages to complement the surrounding light industrial streetscape.
Part of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Sydney, the BMRI focuses on research into mental health and clinical issues relating to the brain. The Youth Mental Health Building consists of two floors for consultation and patient interaction and two floors of research laboratories.
The research laboratories sit within a two-storey ‘light box’ above the original heritage façade. The ‘box’ is clad with translucent glass planks, ensuring diffuse daylight to the laboratories throughout the day and very low energy consumption. To maintain sun penetration to neighbouring houses, the building had to be stepped toward the north. This enabled the new glass box to ‘slide’ over the older building, creating a large-scale composition with smaller scale detailed elements at the conjunction of the forms.
At the street edge, the materials reflect the light industrial context of the area with steel, recycled timber and face concrete block. Internally, the floors are linked by an open stair and small atrium which form the social space of the centre. Meeting rooms and all facilities are accessible from this central space, with materials relating to the exterior – timber, steel and concrete – used at a more tactile scale.
|
1.1.jpg)
|