Diamond Schmitt Architects has received a Merit Award from CODAworx for transforming a children?s hospital clinic into a welcoming space designed to engage young patients and their families. The international awards program recognizes collaborations that integrate commissioned art into interior, architectural, or public spaces.
CIBC Just for Kids ? Photo Lisa Logan
According to a release Diamond Schmitt, “the revitalized CIBC Just for Kids walk-in clinic at St. Joseph?s Health Centre in Toronto creates a stress-free zone where secret peepholes offer views into imaginary worlds and interactive projections and sculptural forms invite discovery and play. Another element to re-cast the department as a children?s place entailed adding recognizable features from the community, such as fanciful illustrations of animals from a nearby zoo riding a Toronto streetcar. The art also serves as a means of improving patient way finding and creating greater presence and identity for each distinct program element in the 8,000-square-foot clinic.” CIBC Just for Kids Clinic ? Photo Lisa Logan
?The idea of integrating artwork came from the need to think beyond the architectonics of the space in order to really connect with the end users, the children,? said Diamond Schmitt Principal Sydney Browne. ?By collaborating with Sydney Smith, a professional children?s book illustrator and Mike Ellis, an artist specializing in small-scale haptic environments, the project systematically became...