Credit Valley Hospital

The first phase of work on the existing hospital campus includes a new main entrance to the hospital, the ambulatory centre, and cancer centre. The new entrance takes the form of an internal courtyard-like space. The lobby is triangular in plan with columns positioned around its perimeter to conserve a central gathering space. There exists a sense of discovery in the lobby, where small and large spaces are dictated by strategically positioned rest spaces, landscaping, and columns. Curved wood benches allow you to sit near and under the columns, causing a feeling of familiarity, relaxation, security, and protection. Other areas are more open, expanding, and optimistic, to encourage a sense of the possible and reflect the clients’ medical values.

As the beams expand upwards, they engage the roof and appear to push the solid portions of the ceiling upwards. This gives the sensation that the structure is naturally growing and pushing upwards, opening, expanding, splitting the roof and exposing the sky beyond. The sunlight then creates multiple patterns on the columns structure and the floor below, ever moving, changing, pulsing.

Farrow Partners organized conversations before starting the design process to understand the medical and clinical values of the clients, patients, families and staff. The core values of the organization were based on feeling safe, understood, and accepted, so that a patient could feel empowered and optimistic throughout their treatment and diagnoses. In salutogenic terms, this is about a sense of coherence, our ability to comprehend a meaningful and manageable future.