Balcony

One of the indoor balconies at Callan Park, a narrow corridor running between exposed brick walls with polished concrete underfoot. A row of windows along the right admits the only strong light, throwing long reflections down the length of the floor. An open blue door with glass panels stands to the left, and a solid blue door closes off the far end. Spaces like this one were where patients could sit and look out toward the garden.

Callan Park's grounds were laid out by Charles Moore, the colonial botanist who designed Sydney's Botanic Gardens. The design philosophy was therapeutic: patients were given views of cultivated landscape on the principle that visual access to gardens, trees, and open sky was a treatment in itself. The space in this photograph was one of several such viewing places set into the wards. Patients could sit here looking out toward the garden. Callan Park closed as a working psychiatric hospital in 2008. The gardens are now public parkland managed by Greater Sydney Parklands, while the ward buildings remain in NSW Health custody under an endorsed conservation management plan.