Room for a better design
Bridgepoint Health Care’s revolutionary hospital plan brings the outside world in
Bridgepoint Health Care isn’t just a new hospital building, it is a new way of building hospitals.
Designed according to simple but powerful principles, Bridgepoint doesn’t hide patients away behind walls and barriers — it puts them at the centre of things. It provides fresh air and sunlight, views of the adjacent park and a strong sense of connection to the world they want to rejoin.
And it is a shining example of a forward-thinking shift in architecture which, literally and figuratively, is the form — if not function — of the world we inhabit. We live in buildings, we work in them and spend the rest of our time moving between the two.
Bridgepoint’s new, 462-bed facility is a 10-storey mirrored landmark that overlooks the Don Valley, west of Broadview Ave. and north of Gerrard St. Construction costs were $380 million.
Designed by a large team of architects from Stantec Architecture Ltd., KPMB Architects, HDR and Diamond Schmitt, Bridgepoint is among the most important projects to have been realized in Toronto in some time. Not only does it argue for radically new hospital architecture, it was constructed under a new privatepublic partnership arrangement.
Bridgepoint president and CEO Marian Walsh, the driving force behind the project, says the new model will shorten hospital stays. If implemented provincewide, she estimates that could save Ontario between $4 and $6 billion annually.