Bendigo Hospital - Integrated Psychiatric Centre, Bendigo, VIC

Silver Thomas Hanley has worked with the successful Exemplar Health Consortium to deliver the $630 million Bendigo Hospital Project. The new facility features a dedicated 80 bed Integrated Psychiatric Inpatient Unit with specific specialist departments including Mother-and-Baby (5 beds), Secure Extended Care (20 beds), Acute Aged Care (20 beds), High Depended Unit (HDU) and Acute Adult Care (35 beds). Additional support areas include a separate main reception, private waiting areas, lounge and dining and private courtyards for each specialist department.

The Psychiatry Unit is centred around providing a calming and nurturing environment, created by providing a sense of nature with artwork and colour palettes drawing from the local Bendigo landscape. Enhanced “wellness” landscaping across the entire hospital site provides additional respite areas for staff, patients and visitors. This is Victoria’s largest regional hospital, providing high quality healthcare for Bendigo and the wider regional community.

STH completed this project in collaboration with Bates Smart. It has won numerous awards culminating with the Sir Zelman Cowan Award for Public Architecture, 2018 at the National Architecture Awards.

“The principles of the design are that it’s a calm, homelike as much as you can make a hospital homelike, environment…We believe that if you get the architecture right, you improve people’s mental state.” Associate Professor Phil Tune, Executive Director Psychiatric Services and Chief Psychiatrist, Bendigo Health

PROJECT SIZE: 5,413 m² Psychiatry Department

STATUS: Completed 2017

CLIENT: Exemplar Health, VHHSBA (Victorian Health and Human Services Building Authority)

PHOTOGRAPHY: Shannon McGrath, John Gollings, Latitude Group

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