Open Door

Mind wellness center

Type: Behavioral health
Context: Graduate thesis studio · Cal Poly Pomona
Location: 4489 Brockton Ave., Riverside, CA

Rendering of a brick path through a green park leading to a low brick-clad wellness center — Approach from the heritage park.

01The brief

A mental health center that trades locks and sally ports for courtyards, orange trees and trust.

The United States is facing a mental health crisis, and the typical facility makes it worse: nursing wards with large dividers, sally ports, security vestibules and isolation rooms. This project studies the Trieste model in Italy, recognized by the World Health Organization as a leading example of care, where an open-door environment encourages trust and wellness.

The earliest American asylums, the Kirkbrides, were built to cure. Size, orientation, ventilation and the healing effect of nature shaped their design. Open Door joins those early ideas with the modern Trieste approach.

The massing opens a public courtyard to the historic street, lifts the residential wing to span 45 feet over the ground, and plants a grid of orange trees at 15-foot intervals, a nod to Riverside’s citrus heritage. Group rooms, therapy, a café and activity rooms are joined by a skybridge.

Site: Downtown Riverside, by the Chinatown Heritage Park
Model: Trieste open-door care + Kirkbride principles
Landscape: Orange grove on a 15 ft grid
Structure: Residential wing spans 45 ft

02Plates · 10

Rendering of people sitting on a circular bench in an orange grove beneath the lifted residential wing — The orange grove under the lifted wing.

Aerial perspective of the building floating over a field of trees — Massing over the grove.

Site plan next to Evergreen Memorial Park with sun, wind and circulation diagrams — Site, sun, wind and circulation.

Grid of massing concept diagrams — Massing concept: courtyard, open street front, orange grid, 45 ft span.

Residential wing floor plan with room elevations — Residential wing floor plan.

Rendering of a single resident room with a wood floor and a teal bookshelf — Single room.

Rendering of a group lounge with a warm brick feature wall — Group lounge.

Rendering of a double-height corridor with wood slats and a balcony — Gallery corridor.

Rendering of a sunlit activity room with a pool table and timber louvers — Activity room.