Norwegian high security facility’s striking setting

June Haugen Welo, of Ratio arkitekter, reports on the design of a ground-breaking and awardwinning new regional high security mental healthcare facility in a striking setting in Trondheim in northern Norway, which the practice co-designed with Danish architectural practice, Karlsson Architects, and to which patients re-located from a former leprosy hospital in November 2021.

St. Olav’s High-Security Mental Hospital in Trondheim is the first regional security unit for forensic psychiatry to be purpose built in Norway. The unit provides care for 21 inpatient forensic mental health service-users – the majority of whom receive treatment under Norway’s Mental Health Act. The facility acts as a centre for rehabilitation and recovery, while providing patients, staff, and the local community, with high levels of safety and security. The new high secure facility – built between 2019 and 2021, won a pricing and design competition in 2017, patients having relocated to it in November 2021. 

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