With its carefully-chosen colours and comforting upholstery, seating provided by Knightsbridge Furniture is helping to create a calming and welcoming atmosphere in Roseberry Park, a specialist mental health hospital in Middlesbrough, run by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.
The winner of several RIBA and BBH design awards, Roseberry Park provides adult and older people’s mental health inpatient services, children's learning disability respite services and medium and low secure accommodation. With 365 inpatient beds, the facility comprises a series of self-contained ward units clustered around landscaped courtyards: the single, en-suite bedrooms are on the ground floor and have access to secure gardens and recreational areas.
"Much care and thought has gone into the design of Roseberry Park," says one visitor, whilst another comments on the "…effective use of natural light with clever accents of colour".
The sofas and chairs have been chosen from the extensive Knightsbridge Furniture portfolio to complement the interior scheme: models from the Shelley, Marlowe and Millie ranges are distinguished by their soft lines and domestic styling, whilst the citrus and berry shades specified for the supple faux hide upholstery bring zesty bursts of colour into the hospital’s family rooms and community spaces.
Despite their ‘home-from-home’ levels of comfort, the easy chairs and matching sofas have all been manufactured to the Knightsbridge ‘Extreme’ specification, which is an intrinsic part of the company’s Challenging Behaviour Collection. Design features include reinforced frames and feet, additional weighting, solid under-bottoms, non-retractable fixings and invisible stapling: the Knightsbridge QA team also ensured that all metal back-tacks were removed prior to despatch.
The Knightsbridge Challenging Behaviour Collection is a portfolio of furniture designed specifically for use in demanding environments, including psychiatric hospitals, residential homes, prisons and other facilities accommodating those demonstrating challenging behaviour.