Step inside
Unlike the old hospital, which had wards, the new facility has single- and double-bed rooms, each with window sill heights that are less than 3 feet, accommodating large horizontal windows. “At the time this facility was programmed, the standard in Canada was different,” says Tod Trigg, senior project manager, HDR Architecture (Omaha, Neb.). “But because these patients aren’t acute, it isn’t as necessary to have single-bed rooms. Double-bed rooms helps with socialization and is part of the therapy process.”
Every room has at least one pop-out window—a 9-foot vertical floor-to-ceiling window that steps out from the building about 2 feet. In fact, there’s one pop-out window for every one of the 464 patient beds in the facility. On the exterior, the windows, which are flanked with metal cladding, project as boxes and create varying colors and shadows, depending on the weather and time of day.
To save cost and create a “beltline” to break up the vertical mass of the building, mechanical systems were moved to the middle. KPMB’s Kuwabara describes it as a “stagger and swagger” design with cantilevers and the building broken into large boxes with bay windows at the end where the patient lounges are located.