Project Description
This 245,000sf (22,793 sm) addition designed by Gibbs Gage Architects and Diamond Schmitt Architects in joint venture significantly transforms this hospital with the addition of ambulatory care clinics, labour and delivery suites and NICU and major surgical facilities. A central atrium resets the building’s focus and provides a new community gathering space, connects in-patient spaces from within the existing hospital to the new facilities, and renews public areas in a spacious, light-filled environment. The large public areas are colour neutral to provide a calm, light-filled waiting space and to accentuate clinical areas by their distinct colour tones, which are visible from the atrium. Bright orange, yellow and green define these areas, adding a distinct wayfinding element to the interior design. Among other design innovations are naturally lit procedure rooms with fritted glass windows and a staff rest area on the perimeter of the fourth-floor surgical suites. The building’s exterior is articulated by distinct forms in different materials that break down the massing and integrate both with the existing hospital wing as well as the surrounding low-rise suburban buildings. The addition reads as a composition of elements and openings which don’t necessarily relate to clinical program areas within. Rather, they are shaped and arranged to reduce the scale of this large addition to the scale of buildings in the vicinity. The glazing on the new east entrance has a dynamic frit pattern that references cloud patterns of the broad prairie sky. The adjacent forms in masonry add visual interest that is further enhanced by a syncopation of asymmetrically placed windows. The mechanical penthouse is similarly varied in form and cladding to integrate this component seamlessly within the building’s appearance.