AWARDS
World Architecture Festival Awards 2024: Sunshine MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING CENTRE
We are excited to share that Sunshine Mental Health and Wellbeing Centre (SMHWC) has been shortlisted in the 2024 World Architecture Festival Awards.
NTC Architects and our partners NH Architecture are delighted to be shortlisted and have our work showcased alongside other world-class projects.
SMHWC responds to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.
From the inclusive codesign process with people with lived experience of mental illness to our architectural response, this project transforms the traditional mental health care setting to create more therapeutic environments. SMHWC integrates the principles of biophilic and salutogenic design, innovatively inverting the traditional internalised floorplan into central large internal courtyards providing daylight and views to nature.
It sets an important precedent for a new approach to mental health design, and hopefully marks the next step in deinstitutionalising mental healthcare settings.
The World Architecture Festival (WAF) is an annual global festival and awards ceremony that celebrates the world’s most innovative projects. This year, the awards will take place in November in Singapore.
Victorian Australian Institute of Architects awards 2023: MCKELLAR MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING CENTRE
NTC Architects and our partners BG Architecture are delighted the McKellar Mental Health & Wellbeing Centre was awarded a Commendation for Interior Architecture by the jurors of the 2023 Victorian Australian Institute of Architects awards.
The jurors citation: “Responding to the Royal Commission into the mental healthcare system, this project not only addresses the physical constraints of such a demanding building type, but wholeheartedly embraces its greater intent, providing a place that cares, nurtures and protects.
With the resultant building wrapping around a series of landscaped and accessible courtyards, warm, textural, light-filled, understandable in its layout while robust and protective in its built form. It is domestic in scale and feel as opposed to institutional”.
Victorian Premier’s Design Awards 2021: MCKELLAR MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING CENTRE
NTC Architects and our partners BG Architecture, the Victorian Health Building Authority and Barwon Health, received a High Commendation in the 2021 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards.
The Barwon Health 16-bed Mental Health and Wellbeing Unit (MH&WU) on the McKellar Centre represents best practice in mental health service co-design for people aged 50+.
Innovative, contemporary, light-filled and directly connected with nature, the unit’s co-design – by consumers, carers, providers and design experts – was developed on foundations of genuine trust, curiosity, passion for change and openness to vulnerability.
A person’s mental health, wellbeing and physical health needs will be met through a design and model of care that is very deliberately non-coercive, hope-inspiring and focussed on building greater independence, improving quality of life and strengthening community connections.