St George's Community Green and the Three Shelters

Designs for this work were commissioned by the Northumberland Mental Health Trust with funding from Arts Council North. St George’s Hospital is a psychiatric hospital which has recently moved into a new building. It has extensive grounds which are not currently used successfully as part of hospital provision. The community green is intended to address this and create an external space that supports the well being and recovery of hospital residents. Funding is currently being sought for the actual construction. 

This work is intended to create focus, identity and sheltered space for the community green. Long term residents, short stay patients, staff and visitors will be free to use the space to walk, sit, think and talk. It will be suitable for private contemplation, as well as the occasional organised event such as a fair, or a performance.

The work comprises three architecturally sculptured buildings, placed in a triangular relationship with one another. These define a central open space, with sheltered seated areas facing into the middle, but also provide for sheltered space which looks out across the green. The shelters will be connected to one another, and to access points on to the green, with footpaths which wend across the gently undulating surface of the surrounding grass meadow.

The shelters will be of varying size, and give the impression of a family group, with a clear identity of belonging to each other, and so reinforcing the sense of a supportive environment. They have an elongated design, which has been influenced by the need to ensure that any approach to the seated areas has to be made from a distance. It is expected that people will wish to use these spaces for times of private thought or conversation, and the length of approach is designed to prevent any unexpected encounter. People will feel secure in their chosen stopping place, and others will be able to move on to another space, without disturbing the peace of the original inhabitant.

The surface fabric of the lower section of the shelters will have the appearance of complex dry stone walling, and be a fluid mosaic of various stones, ceramic, glass and cast iron. The seating will be built as part of the fabric of the main building, but lined with stout hardwood timbers that follow the movement of the mosaic. The roofs will be made from thick heather (Ling) thatch, creating great domed stacks over the stonework.

The grassed areas of the community green have been divided into two distinct spaces, the Outer Green and the Inner Green. The Outer Green will be managed as meadow and allowed to grow with its variety of wild flowers. The Inner Green lying within the space defined by the shelters, will be managed as a short cut lawn, enabling the area to be comfortably used for lying or sitting, and to be used for community events. 

Influences in the design of this work, have included Monet’s series of paintings of haystacks, with a view to the relationships of form, light and landscape.

It has also been informed by the remains of ancient settlements, such as Scara Brae in Orkney, and Chysauster in Cornwall, where the buildings are absolutely integrated with their environment. The overall feel of the works will be of timelessness, where they are at once ancient and futuristic; of works which have always belonged in their space, which will always have their place and continue to offer shelter and comfort to the people who use them.

Scara Brae in Orkney