Why Is Hospital Design So Unhealthy?
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The Globe and Mail, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2007 G Review R5 ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ON THE STAND 8 BY JAMES ADAMS 8 A WEEKLY ROUNDUP OF THE BEST MAGAZINE READS ON THE RACKS THE WALRUS OXFORD AMERICAN QUARTERLY LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA January/February, 2008 Music Issue, 2007 December, 2007 ................................................... ................................................... ................................................... As bodies, jobs and socio-eco- James Ridout Winchester arrived Making up lists of the best or nomic clout continue to migrate in Montreal 40 years ago, a 23- worst of this and that – it’s al- westward, there’s been a corre- year-old Louisiana native dodging ways been great fun and no more sponding intensification of inter- the draft that was sending tens of so than at the end of a year when est among national (a.k.a. thousands of his contemporaries the media, in particular, concoct Toronto-based) media in just what to Vietnam. Upon his arrival, he all sorts of retrospectives and the heck is going on Out There. grew a beard, changed his first rankings re: the previous 12 Ergo, The Walrus’s Cities issue name to Jesse and proceeded to months to rouse and rile their au- which, among other items, in- write and record what Canadian dience. cludes a droll and perceptive fea- expatriate writer Hal Crowther The LRC’s variation on this ture on Calgary by Don Gillmor, calls “three of the prettiest, sub- theme for its 2007 finale is to get one of the magazine’s nine con- tlest, most mind-adhesive songs 10 regular contributors to name, tributing editors. Gillmor’s a To- in the country-rock canon” – Yan- then demolish, a batch of so- rontonian but he was born in kee Lady, Biloxi and The Brand called classics (one per contribu- Winnipeg and lived in Calgary in rather than its outlying suburbs … New Tennessee Waltz. Crowther apparently would like tor) they deem to have oversized oner of Azkaban, but James the 1970s when the city was in and now downtown is on the A North Carolinian born in Hal- a closer bond with Winchester reputations. Canadian Review ed- Joyce’s Ulysses. I say “predicta- the throes of its last gluttonous cusp of a transformation.” For ifax, Crowther actually was a but the singer-songwriter has al- itor Mark Proudman, for example, bly” because, based on Murphy’s boom. Gillmor, the most tangible harbin- classmate of Winchester’s in the ways been low-profile, often re- tears into George Grant’s 1965 es- own rather plummy, antiquarian For much of its recent history, ger of this change is the Bow, a early-to-mid-1960s when they clusive, mysterious in his say Lament for a Nation. Novel- prose, one intuits his own tastes Calgary has been a stubbornly $1-billion mixed-use project high- both attended Massachusetts’s comings and goings. While he ists Mark Jarman and Keith incline to Shakespeare, Boswell suburban city, poorly planned, ut- lighted by a curved 59-storey tow- Williams College and Jesse was still does the occasional gig and Oatley pooh-pooh, respectively, and Dickens. For all its “marvels terly beholden to the automobile, er designed by British starchitect known simply as Jim. Their rela- “everyone knowledgeable knows The Sportswriter by Richard Ford of mime and tone,” Ulysses, final- architecturally lacklustre, “almost Norman Foster as the HQ for oil- tionship, if one can even call it who he is … almost no one and Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers ly, is a failure, Murphy writes, be- Aryan in its homogeneity.” But and-gas giant EnCana. The “city that, has been decidedly tenuous knows where he is.” Still, Crowth- Karamazov (although Oatley ad- cause “it lacks the compelling “in the past several years,” Gill- on the plain,” as another British ever since. In fact, as Crowther er strives to be philosophic: “The mits to finding Crime and Punish- artistic energy of managed sus- mor writes, with the city’s popu- architect, Thomas Mawson, de- confesses in “The Rhumba Man,” Rhumba Man is out there some- ment “totally engaging”). pense, which -- even in the most lation crashing the one-million scribed Calgary almost a century “since the century turned, I’ve where, and somewhere we’ll Predictably perhaps, Globe and artful of modernist fiction – is still mark, “there has been a hesitant ago, “[is threatening] to become only talked to him once,” and this meet again.” Mail columnist/CBC pundit Rex the one pre-condition of the un- political realization that Calgary beautiful.” was backstage at a bluegrass fes- Murphy tears several strips off – willed pleasure that inheres in will be judged by its urban centre tival in Wilkesboro, N.C. no, not Harry Potter and the Pris- any truly joyful reading.” ARCHITECTURE 8 HEALING POWERS " The profession as a whole is being treated as less than a service industry. Treated very badly, exploited very badly. Some of us have more work than we can handle, so we can afford to be courageous. Architect Moshe Safdie The Credit Valley Hospital in Mississauga, Ont., is a rare example of a design that shows hospitals are ultimately about the people inside them. TIBOR KOLLEY/THE GLOBE AND MAIL Why is hospital design so unhealthy? The stupidity is such that even a spa-like waiting area into a It was at a fancy party at the consider beyond the walls of um might lose its interesting Safdie was being asked to treatment room. National Gallery of Canada the hospital. The reinvention wooden timbers in favour of a compile output specifications – There are important lessons that David Culver, chairman of of the rail lands for the Glen dumb box. A recycling system not design. here for all those government the McGill University Health campus of the McGill complex of grey water might simply be Last year, 2.8 million Cana- officials hungry for more pri- Centre board, first approached has the potential to revitalize skipped over. Whether or not LISA ROCHON dians were admitted to hospi- vate-consortium build-outs. Safdie. Within one year, the several adjoining neighbour- the developer architects comp- CITYSPACE tals for an average of one week. Hospitals are, after all, about heady cocktail chatter had hoods. The commission is one ly with the recommendations .................................................... What they experienced, for the the people inside them. And translated into a public an- of urban architecture: how to of the client’s designer is a [email protected] most part, were factories built the Credit Valley board under- nouncement. The McGill group heal community both within moot point – unlike Britain, to contain the ill. A hospital stood that inherently. “Collec- trumpeted Safdie as the world- and outside of the hospital. there are few agencies in Cana- that helps to heal through a tively, the citizens on the board renowned architect who shot But by the summer of 2007, da that review the design of oshe Safdie stood up for gentle, meaningful design? were uniform in their decision to fame with the iconic design the Charest government, like major civic buildings. the profession of archi- Don’t hold your breath – it’s to have a building that mat- of Habitat ’67: “His return many provincial governments During the 1960s, Toronto ar- Mtecture the other day, bad for you. tered,” says Bart Wassmans- home to Montreal represents a determined to remove hospital chitect Eberhard Zeidler was and, for having the guts, he True, there are some excep- dorf, chair of Credit Valley’s wonderful opportunity to cele- capital costs from their ledgers, commissioned to develop a de- needs to be thanked. He did tions, such as Credit Valley building committee. He tells brate and assure the city’s ap- backed away from paying di- sign for a highly flexible, intel- what too many architects fear, Hospital in Mississauga, Ont., me this while sitting on a pointment as a UNESCO City rectly for the new mega-hospi- ligent building system. Unlike or can’t afford to do: He quit. by Toronto-based Farrow Part- bench underneath the monu- of Design,” gushed a 2006 me- tal complex. Instead, a P3 was so much of the work available He quit working on the master nership, which welcomes visi- mental curves of the wooden dia release issued by the imposed on the McGill group. to architects these days, Zeidler plan of the $1.6-billion McGill tors into a life-giving atrium of structural trees. Somebody MUHC. In this arrangement, one of was allowed to author a pure University Health Centre, a massive Douglas fir columns with the waxy skin of a cancer Together with four other two bidding private consortia vision. That vision translated once-in-a-lifetime commission and beams that grow and patient is playing a glorious Montreal firms, Boston-based will be selected to finance, (to great acclaim) into McMas- that would have returned the spread through the space like a medley on the grand piano Safdie was originally charged build and own the new mega- ter University’s Health Scienc- prodigal son to his hometown. dense forest. Light wells are nearby. “We have a responsibil- with innovating a hospital hospital complex on the 43- es Centre. Similarly, Ron Thom Who could blame him? He was dropped through the space to ity,” says Wassmansdorf, “to master plan for the 21st centu- acre (17.4-hectare) brownfield was given the authority by his being treated like an ordinary help orient visitors and staff. treat public buildings as more ry, one, he says, that might site in the city’s west end. The progressive academic bosses to schmo. And a discreet side entrance than a big box.” have provided a gracious flow government will then lease create a new, remarkable envi- “When I was invited to come into the Carlo Fidani Peel Re- And they did exactly that: of traffic – cars, subway arriv- back the complex during a 25- ronment for learning.