From the waiting area, patients pass through a rounded doorway to access the clinical care rooms. The facility?s waiting area and all of its clinical spaces are designed and placed for enjoying plentiful natural light.
PROJECT Galt Health, Cambridge, Ontario
ARCHITECT Jaliya Fonseka Studio
TEXT David T. Fortin
PHOTOS Riley Snelling
Spaces for healthcare present, in many ways, the ideal opportunity to explore an ethos of care through design?an approach that is grounded in being mindful of one?s intuitions and individual well-being, but also based in empathy and compassion for others. Since Tommy Douglas first introduced medicare to Saskatchewan in the 1950s, the idea of universal healthcare has arguably remained one of the most broadly embraced Canadian values. A society that sees access to basic health services as a human right is one that, ultimately, believes in a collective responsibility to care for each other.  Yet the bedrock of universal healthcare?the family physician?s office?is often an uninspired space, wedged above pharmacies and into strip malls. It is rare for the designers of such clinics to earnestly embrace an ideology of care. Many, if not the majority, of family health clinics across the country have a bare minimum of design thinking invested into them, offering a series of sterilized and compartmentalized windowless patient rooms flanking equally utilitarian corridors. These kinds of spaces hardly inspire optimism for someone who is likely feeling vuln...