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Brain, Mind, and Mallett Street: Understanding the Spaces of Mental Health, Neurology and Neuroscience collaboration
Understanding the role of design in delivering of clinical services and research at the Brain and Mind Centre
In 2020, the Brain and Mind Centre (BMC), a multidisciplinary research institute at the University of Sydney, commenced a collaboration with the School of Architecture, Design and Planning (ADP) on research to better understand the role of spatial design in the delivery of clinical services and research in mental health, neurology, and neuroscience.
Since the collaboration’s inception, an ADP team consisting of Professor Chris Smith, Professor Donald McNeill, Senior Lecturer Leigh-Anne Hepburn, and Associate Lecturer Jason Dibbs has conducted a range of research and teaching activities with BMC colleagues.
These have included a co-design workshop and a series of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from the various disciplinary, clinical and research groups working within the BMC’s facilities; an intensive design studio for a youth mental health outreach centre; and a graduation thesis studio, ‘Head Place,’ for Master of Architecture students. The latter focused on the redesign of the former Bonds Factory on Mallett Street, Camperdown to accommodate the various research and clinical activities of the BMC.
In June 2023, Professor Chris Smith and Associate Lecturer Jason Dibbs presented research and teaching outputs from the Brain, Mind and Mallett Street collaboration to the Executive Leadership Committee of the BMC. Research from this collaboration is also published as a book chapter, “Space of Co-Design in Mental Health, Neurology, and Neuroscience” in Design for Mental Health and Wellbeing: Co-Design, Interventions, Education and Policy (Routledge, forthcoming 2023), and in a paper for the Situated Ecologies of Care Conference (Architectural Humanities Research Association, forthcoming 2023).
The collaboration between ADP and BMC remains active, with interview data analysis ongoing and informing other planned research outputs. These include the second ‘Head Place’ graduation thesis studio and the development of a new collaborative research trajectory exploring the role of spatial design in healthy ageing.