Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/124234
Bridgepoint Hospital by Yvan Marston ringing together a next-generation hospital with a fearsome 149-year-old jail could easily have become a study in contrasts: One, the future of chronic care, and the other a grim reminder of past neglect. But the figure of Father Time carved into the keystone at the south entrance of the Renaissance Revival-style jail speaks to what unites the buildings. Bridgepoint's new $622-million facility is for longer stays to serve patients with complex chronic diseases. These patients need an environment that promotes wellness. "The new building was designed to support our active care philosophy where patients, caregivers, family and community support are part of one coherent approach to providing care to people living with multiple and complex health conditions," says Jane Merkley, Bridgepoint's chief nursing executive. And the space contributes to that, she says, explaining that by having views of the parks, city streets and buildings, patients have the opportunity to remain connected to the community. "This has positive impacts on their treatment, sense of hope and the healing process," she adds. The 10-storey glass and zinc-paneled rectangular building sits on a north-south orientation taking full advantage of the cityscape to the west and nestled neatly into the hillside of Riverdale Park overlooking the Don Valley Parkway. The fifth floor is deeply recessed which prevents it from appearing as one large monolithic block. Architecturally, it breaks down the composition of inpatient rooms above and below into smaller components. The fifth floor provides semipublic spaces in the core of the building providing opportunity for increased socialization. "To unite the whole thing, you have a continuous plane of glazing in the centre of the west and east elevation. This unites the upper and lower half," says Greg Colucci of Diamond Schmitt Architects, whose firm, along with HDR Architecture, form the project's architects of record. "And wherever there is a break from the pure box, that is a space B 13-03-14 4:35 PM Bridgepoint Hospital p64-67Bridgepoint Hospital.indd 65 specifically for patient use such as a dining room, lounge or therapy," he says. At the core of each floor are therapeutic services and on the perimeter are single- or double-occupancy rooms for its 464 patient load. Common therapy spaces are on every patient floor, as are communal dining facilities. Besides the hospital foundation, there is little in the way of administration offices as most have been incorporated into an ambitious repurposing of the property's historic Don Jail, a notorious Toronto prison that was mothballed in the late 1970s. The whole project – which includes public roadways, the new 680,000-square-foot facility, the heritage restoration and adaptive reuse of the historic jail, the demolition of a decommissioned modern jail (adjacent to the Don Jail) as well as the eventual destruction of the 1960s Bridgepoint Hospital – involves a complex arrangement making two teams of architects responsible for the two-tiered project design and delivery under Infrastructure Ontario's Alternative Financing and Procurement (AFP) program. The first team, Stantec Architecture Ltd. and KPMB Architects, formed a joint venture in 2006 to design the new hospital for Bridgepoint. The hospital called for a design exemplar, which saw the team design what the building would look like, its materiality and spatial arrangements. This joint venture produced the Project Specific Output Specification (PSOS) that Bridgepoint then put to tender. "The design exemplar was very prescriptive," says Mitchell Hall of KPMB. "The PSOS included over 250 drawings and outlined mandatory requirements – everything from the size and shape of the building to details about the material." As the first design exemplar P3 project in Ontario, it was attractive for the joint venture because of the level of specificity required, explains Stuart Elgie of Stantec Architecture. When Plenary Health and PCL Constructors Canada were awarded the work, they had their own team of architects, HDR Architecture and Diamond Schmitt Architects Inc. They became responsible for the design as constructed. This team developed the design exemplar as set out by Stantec|KPMB and the rest of the planning design compliance (PDC) team. As large construction projects in Ontario go, such complex P3 arrangements have become increasingly common since 2009, says Darius Zaccak, of PCL Constructors, the designbuild contractor on the project. "We've taken a very broad role here, one that is an extension of our traditional role as general constructor or construction manager," he says. Building in the well-established Riverdale neighbourhood, mere feet from a fully-operational hospital, as well as restoring another structure that is physically connected to a working jail, posed a host of challenges for the constructor. "The first thing we did was to articulate the plan in a simple way by detailing things like the number of trucks coming through the neighbourhood," says Zaccak. PCL then coordinated regular meetings with the community and the site's existing tenants to inform them on things like project status and when roads would be closed. Reintegration into the community is the ultimate goal for patients here and it was important to bring the community into the hospital space, says Stuart Elgie of Stantec. "One of the key moves from this perspective was the connection from Photo: Tom Arban / courtesy Diamond Schmitt Architects april 2013 /65 13-04-05 2:14 PM