KASIAN ARCHITECTURE INTERIOR DESIGN & PLANNING LTD.
Firm's role on the project: Prime Consultant, Architect of Record, Interior Design
About the Project
A set of project drivers act as a tool to facilitate the design team’s comprehension of the main criteria for the project. The drivers for South Health Campus seek to:
- Promote and enable family and patient-centered care.
- Facilitate and express innovation.
- Promote healing and enable wellness including physical wellness, spiritual wellness, emotional wellness, social wellness, occupational wellness and environmental wellness.
- Embrace and enable technology.
- Create a sense of place through flexible and adaptable design.
- Respond and connect to the community.
- Attract and retain a professional workforce.
Research and Challenges
Challenge 1: Use innovation to combine previously separate technology to increase efficiency in Surgical Suites.
Solution 1: Designed to be the most advanced interventional and hybrid capable operating rooms in Canada, extensive research produced the optimum suite layout to combine Invasive Surgery, Interventional Radiology and Interventional Cardiology disciplines (with both laparoscopic and invasive potentials) onto the same footprint. This was first hospital in North America to successfully achieve this.
Challenge 2: Use the built environment to achieve patient flow efficiencies.
Solution 2: Workflow studies optimized adjacencies, confirmed through stakeholder simulations; ER designed with universally sized and configured rooms, organized into pods that can be flexible for ‘grouping’ by acuity to optimize workforce utilization.
Challenge 3: Create an environment that promotes patient safety and quality of care.
Solution 3: The latest in Evidence Based Design proven solutions (same handed rooms, IP&C standards) were used with aim to decrease incidents of medical errors; engagement with healthcare providers and patients yielded refinements enhancing experience (switched sink and toilet location in patient washrooms to facilitate better patient experience, shift bed dock and headwall to enable better access to patient and related peripherals).
Challenge 4: Ensure diversity in the population is recognized in easy site navigation.
Solution 4: Universal Design principles and clear program planning lead to successful intuitive wayfinding: clustering of related services demarked by distinct landscaping, changing colours schemes and on awnings of service entrances; pedestrian street running length of campus interspersed with storefront amenities act as landmarks; lighting adjusted to become elder-friendly.
Challenge 5: Anticipate future service delivery plans and innovations by creating a highly flexible and adaptable built environment.
Solution 5: Program and design modules were developed benchmarking the service delivery trends of North America and Europe. Modular designs adapt easily and cost effectively to service and volume changes when needed. Judicious use of interstitial mechanical services areas in OR floors allow cost effective and easy conversion when new technology and procedures necessitate adjustments and eliminate service disruption.
Lessons Learned
Given the duration of the project and that the project was a greenfield site without existing staff, it was important through the design and construction process that clinical and design decisions made at the start of the project were maintained through construction. To ensure this happened, a clinical design team was established at the outset of the project. This group was tasked with making decisions that incorporated best practice, Evidence Based Design and considered future trends. As a result, as staff were hired, any questions or challenges on the design were fielded by the clinical design team, permitting construction to proceed unhindered.