ARC3015Y F
Instructor: George Baird
Meeting Section: L0106
Tuesday, 9:00am - 1:00pm, 2:00pm - 6:00pm; Friday, 2:00pm - 6:00pm

This fall, George Baird offers a studio which will focus on the design of a new patient care centre for Sick Kids Hospital.

This will be a parallel academic investigation of a design project which is actually being designed in the real world, and for which the design leads are Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB architects and Michael Moxam of Stantec Architecture. Kuwabara and Moxam have both agreed to participate as advisors to the studio, throughout the term.

The existing site of Sick Kids is a full block in downtown Toronto, stretching from University Avenue to the west to Elizabeth Street to the east, and from Gerrard Street to the north, to Elm Street to the south. The west 2/3rds of the block is presently occupied by a series of buildings erected between the late 1940’s – the original building facing University Avenue – and multiple wings to the east of it. The east 1/3rd of the block is occupied by a wing constructed in the late 1980’s, and designed by the Zeidler Partnership. This wing is centred around a large, multi-storey atrium.

Sick Kids plans to demolish almost all of the existing buildings from the period from the 1940’s to the 1960’s, – except the one containing the loading dock and public parking entrance for the entire complex – retaining only the 1980’s wing on the east 1/3 of the block. The new patient care centre will be located on the west 2/3rds portion of the block, facing University Avenue and Gerrrard Street.

Four design questions will direct the work of the studio. They are as follows:

1. Are there recent fundamental shifts in contemporary hospital building typologies that have the capacity to facilitate long term program flexibility?
2. What strategies are effective in addressing the challenge of constructing larger and larger health care and research facilities within urban centres?
3. How does one achieve integrated sustainability in the design of health care environments?
4. What drives innovation and design excellence in health care?

It will also be important for students in the studio to recognize that Sick Kids is a pediatric hospital, and the proposed new centre will need to address all the issues arising in the design of such a facility, such the special needs of patients who are children, and of the members of those patients families. In addition, they will need to address the issue of the relationship of the spatial order of the pediatric hospital to the public space system of the city that surrounds it.

Instructor Bio:

George Baird is the former Dean (2004-2009) of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and is a partner in the Toronto-based architecture and urban design firm Baird Sampson Neuert Architects. Prior to becoming Dean at the University of Toronto, Baird was the G. Ware Travelstead Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He has published and lectured widely throughout most parts of the world.

He is co-editor (with Charles Jencks) of Meaning in Architecture (1969), and (with Mark Lewis) of Queues Rendezvous, Riots (1995). He is author of Alvar Aalto (1969) and The Space of Appearance (1995). Most recently, his researches in architectural theory have focused on the question of the political and social status of urban public space, and on debates revolving around subject of “critical architecture”. In this regard, his much discussed essay: “Criticality and Its Discontents” was published in the Harvard Design Magazine in Fall 2004, and his subsequent text: “The Criticality Debate: Some Further Thoughts” appeared in September in T/A Magazine, Shanghai.

Baird’s consulting firm, Baird Sampson Neuert is the winner of numerous design awards, including Canadian Architect Magazine awards over many years, and Governor General’s Awards for Cloud Gardens Park in 1994 and Erindale Hall on the campus of the University of Toronto at Mississauga in 2006. Baird is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada. He has been the recipient of the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Architecture and Design Award (1992) and the da Vinci Medal of the Ontario Association of Architects (2000).