Located in the creative lifestyle space City Walk, close to the Business Bay and Trade Centre areas of Dubai, the new state-of-the-art clinic provides a friendly, welcoming and contemporary environment, for both adults and children to receive mental health and wellbeing treatments to assist in their journey to recovery. Our brief was to create a beautiful and expressive community building for healing and reducing the stigma of mental healthcare with a sense of openness, inclusiveness and an inviting atmosphere.

We used key design principles to drive the project: 

SOCIAL CONNECTION, via the use of art to act as positive distraction, aid in wayfinding and landmarking, and tell uplifting stories and connect to a source of nostalgic comfort.

NATURE, with the introduction of biophilic design elements to encourage the connection between humans and nature, offering considerable benefits to mental health and positively influencing recovery.

PRIVACY, promoting a feeling of safety, experienced on a personal level. Proxemic zones were created between patients and staff and private patients zones implemented through considerate space planning. 

MATERIALS, in particular the use of tactile materials encouraging engagement directly with a sense of touch.

SOUND consideration for acoustic protection; combined with natural sounds contributing to perceptions of restoration and stress recovery.

FOCUS in the form of soothing objects brings attention to the present and contributes to a practice of mindfulness.