ABSTRACT
This unit has rooms for nine mothers (rooms 1-9, Figure 16.1). Each mother's room opens on one side to a common corridor through folding panel doors. This corridor provides ready access for her visitors and her obstetrician who looks after her as though she were on a postnatal ward. When the panel doors are closed there is still a gap above, which provides adequate ventilation but defective soundproofing. The mothers' rooms corridor has direct access to a patio and grass-covered banks. The outside wall is south-facing and consists of fine sheets of glass (12 Xl Yz ft), separated by vertical black supporting strips. During the summer, as might have been anticipated, the greenhouse effect from this arrangement results in intolerable overheating and has necessitated the installation of electrically operated silver coloured blinds. The mothers' rooms open on the other side into the nurseries. Five of the rooms have small intermediate cubicles (1 c-6c, Figure 16.1). The nursing areas can, therefore, be approached from the mothers' rooms as well as from a working corridor off which is the nurses' station. As far as possible a mother will be given a room which leads directly into the appropriate nursery. The door between her room and the nursery has an observation panel, and is not felt to be a barrier between her and her baby to whom she is allowed free access at all times.
