Psychiatric Institutions and the Physical Environment: Combining Medical Architecture Methodologies and Architectural Morphology to Increase Our Understanding

The pluralism that characterized the development of psychiatric services around the world created a variety of policies, care models and building types, and fostered experimental approaches. Increased complexities of care, institutional remnants, stigma, and the limited diagnostic and interventional accuracy of psychiatric treatments resulted in institutional behaviors surviving, even in newly built facilities. This was raised by research on awarded psychiatric buildings. The locus of the research comprised two acute psychiatric wards in London. Each was evaluated using the SCP model, a tool specifically developed for the evaluation of mental health facilities, identifying the relation between policy, care regime, and patient-focused environment. Data were derived from plans, visits, and staff and patient interviews. Findings were juxtaposed to those of an earlier study using the same methodology. Also, a syntactic analysis was conducted, to identify the social logic of ward layouts. There were potential connections between regimes, spatial configuration, and the social fabric. Methodologies of architectural morphologies indicated areas that would attract people because of the layout rather than function. However, insights into medical architecture outlined institutional undercurrents and provided alternative interpretation to spatial analysis. Comprehending the social fabric of psychiatric facilities could challenge the current surveillance-led model, as psychosocial rehabilitation uses could be encouraged at points of higher integration.