Location: Rustenburg, South Africa

A specialized mental health Unit designed to create a “home away from home” environment for psychiatric health patients. This is a 52-bed facility with a combination of medium to long stay wards, acute wards and a small children/adolescents unit. The two storey building houses staff offices on the first floor and patient spaces are restricted to the ground floor. Occupational therapy spaces are included in the various wards and include life skills teaching spaces, pottery workshop, gardening and group therapy rooms.

The IUSS specifications by National department of Health have strongly influenced the design of this facility and the department has made numerous visits to the facility to benchmark future psychiatric units in the country.

A further phase of the project is yet to be implemented but is to include a 20bed forensic psychiatric unit.

The project also involved major alterations to the Main Hospital Theatre. The Theatres were built decades ago and had become obsolete functionally. The sizes were also quite small and made operating procedures difficult especially for orthopedic procedures where equipment can consume a lot of space. Fully equipped with hermetically sealed doors and laminar flow hoods, this facility has been extensively modernized and is fully operational today.