Healing in the heartland: this regional hospital in Canada's interior connects with light and nature

Architectural Review, The, May, 2005

Thunder Bay lies in a remote part of north-eastern Ontario, on the edge of Lake Superior. Conditions in the Canadian interior are not for the faint hearted, with temperatures fluctuating from -45 deg C during winter months to 35 deg C in summer. Formed from the amalgamation of two neighbouring communities, Thunder Bay is a young town, only 25 years old, with a population of 120 000. Rather than renovate two existing local hospitals, it was decided to build one single regional facility to serve both the town and the surrounding rural population which is spread over an area the size of France.

As well as providing 375 acute care beds, the new hospital operates a regional cancer centre, a mental health unit and maternity and paediatric departments. Despite the remote setting and harsh climate, the area has strong cultural and natural history traditions, as well as long-standing connections with forestry and paper industries. Toronto-based Salter Farrow Pilon respond to these associations in their design, using timber as a structural element, exploiting available natural light and both connecting with and abstracting nature.

The site lies on the edge of town; space to build is not an issue in this part of the world where malls are common, and from some angles the large, sprawling, low-rise building has a mall-like character. However, with walls made of blocks of crushed local Tyndal stone it has a more physically solid and socially imposing presence than the average flimsy gimcrack retail shed. Surrounded by new pools and landscaping and with untouched forest as a backdrop, the new hospital resembles a citadel in the wilderness, with the unpredictable power of nature never very far away.

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The building is organised around a T-shaped plan oriented on a north-south axis, with the bar of the T at the north end of the site. The leg of the T is perforated by a series of courtyards, which separate the active, working areas of the hospital on the west side, from passive, recuperative, patient wards on the east. Patient rooms have views either into the courtyards or out over the pools and landscaping. The junction between bar and leg, and also, more crucially, between public and institution, is articulated by the building's architectural set-piece, a triple-height, glazed galleria that curves gently to follow the sun path, capturing and diffusing precious natural light into the building. Conceived as a manmade forest dappled by sunlight, the galleria's laminated timber structure (a material previously prohibited by Ontario's building code) has a distinctly arboreal quality. Imbued with the poetics of nature, comfort, wisdom and healing, it also recalls the heroic curved timber bridges of earlier eras that helped to link and civilise Canada's vast hinterland.

The theme of therapeutic daylight is continued with direct light skylights incorporated into radiation treatment rooms (the first cancer centre in Canada to do so) and main nursing stations are oriented with views to the outside through three-storey mini atria in each of the in-patient areas. Passive solar gain is also harnessed as part of the building's energy strategy. Beyond the project's physical and material aspects is a concern for human values that goes beyond simply caring for the sick, but is a paradigm for healing body, mind and spirit. C.S.

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