The architects behind winning wellbeing schemes in this year’s New London Awards showed off some of the secrets of their successes behind designing happy, health places at a special webinar session this week.

Wellbeing Wonders was, said webinar chair Tamsie Thomson, intended to show how projects put a focus on not just the physical but also the mental health at the heart of the design process. This, she said, was one of the most important factors behind creating places that bring ‘intangible joy and diversity beyond mere sustainability and function’.

BDP architect Robyn Poulson kicked off by presenting the category winner, the Centre for Creative Learning, Francis Holland School, located in the Belgravia conservation area in west London between Sloane Square and Victoria Station. The scheme for the independent day school was in a very residential area and where play, social learning and green space had become marginalized, she said. It was important to think about wellbeing right from the start and developing the brief, said Poulson, with the headmistress being adamant that the new library should provide social learning space as well as a ‘lush green oasis’ for the pupils to relax in.

Build Up Hackney

The project has two main elements – a library and roof garden, connected by a bridge. ‘I think wellbeing can only be improved with joy and happiness and excitement and this project provided so many opportunities for us to bring a lot of fun both internally and on the external elements as well’, she said. It had also provided pupils with multiple sensory experiences to help enrich their learning and enhance their wellbeing while also having a positive effect on neighbours in that they now overlook a rich, lush, Chelsea-style garden.

Highly commended scheme the Holland Park Playground was next, presented by Barbara Kaucky, director and co-founder of Erect Architecture, who declared her central thesis: ‘we believe really that a child-friendly city is a city for all’. The scheme is a substantial play area of 4,000 m2 aimed at creating space for all ages to play together, including ‘fishing towers’ and other complex three-dimension play structures, landforms, landscape features like stepping stones, and a language of water flowing through the site, plus a calm setting for an ecology centre. A key move was to include a lot of bespoke seating, said Kaucky, to cater for elderly people with less mobility are comfortable since children often come with their carers.

Eccleston Yards, Buckley Gray Yeoman © Matt Chisnall