Work has started onsite at a £27m mental health facility in Dumfries.

Designed by Archial Architects, it is located on a greenfield site beyond Crichton University Campus.

The care-driven 85-bed mental health facility will incorporate a variety of components, including facilities for: adult in-patients; dementia; elderly care, rehabilitation wards as well as an intensive psychiatric-care unit.

As Principal Supply Chain Member with Laing O’Rourke as Principal Supply Chain Partner to NHS Scotland's Construction Integrated Supply Chain, Archial’s winning design was clinically driven and influenced by the dedicated landscape area within which the facility will be set to produce a naturalistic solution with striking effect.

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Calum MacCalman, Director at Archial Architects, said: "The preliminary design and briefing package led us to develop an organic shape and form for a single-storey facility using naturalistic colours.

"And because of the greenfield nature of the site, together with the fact that nature tends to find a way of providing solutions which are elegant, aesthetically pleasing and practical, it seemed only natural that we should enable nature and the site itself to drive forward the design for this facility.

"It's a wonderful setting with tremendous aspects and the design of the facility seeks to make the most of the many benefits to be had from the site itself by making the building as sustainable as possible and by maximising the use of daylight.

"The design of the mental health centre aims to create an environment which promotes the delivery of therapeutic care and helps remove any stigma associated with mental health through a design as far-removed as possible from that of an institutional building.

"As advocates of the use of the physical environment to promote a sense of well-being, we have designed the facility in such a way that all its wards look out onto gardens and the surrounding landscape," he concluded.

(GK/BMcC)