A First in Canada: A Facility for Chronic Disease and Disability Management

Bridgepoint Active Healthcare is Canada’s leader in complex care and rehabilitation. The 10-storey, 472-bed hospital is the largest healthcare facility of its kind in Canada and the only organization dedicated to people living with complex chronic disease and disability. Using space already available, the adjacent 148-year-old Don Jail was readapted into the hospital’s administrative and education centre. The restoration is emblematic of Bridgepoint’s commitment to transformative rehabilitation—giving new life to an important Toronto landmark.

Being that complex-continuing care patients typically spend up to three months in a hospital, special attention was given to providing a new kind of healthcare in a new kind of hospital—one that acts as a civic building, an urban place and a place for healthcare and community to come together.

Key features of Bridgepoint include:

• Visitor-friendly features, such as glass walls, food concessions, retail outlets, learning centres, an auditorium, and an outdoor terrace with steps to parkland draw the community to the building.
• From the patient rooms, patients can peer into the outside world through narrow floor-to-ceiling “pop-out” windows—a key exterior design element—interspersed with horizontal windows.
• Communal patient dining rooms, an internet café, a spiritual room, a rooftop garden, therapy and rehabilitation rooms, outside terraces, and a labyrinth are all designed to get patients out of their rooms and motivated to manage their illnesses.
• In keeping with salutogenic principles that seek to address individuals’ psychosocial well-being, architectural details, textures, and finishes were chosen to signify comfort and community, counteracting the feeling of being in an institution.

Bridgepoint is the first hospital in Toronto to receive a LEED Silver rating, but its sustainability extends beyond LEED to create an architecture of wellness that celebrates a sustainable healthcare system.

Due to the complexity of the project, two teams of architects worked on its design and delivery. Stantec Architecture/KPMB Architects were the Planning, Design and Compliance Architects; and HDR Architecture/Diamond Schmitt Architects were the Design, Build, Finance and Maintain Architects.