Project category: New construction (completed November 2003)

Chief administrator: Tony Vines, Chief Executive Officer, (705) 324-6111

Firm: Parkin Architects, Ltd., (416) 467-8000

Design team: John Christie, Project Director, Architect; May Chow, Project Manager; Sohail Ahktar, Job Captain; Anna Merotto, Intern, Interior Designer (Parkin Architects, Ltd.); Tony Vines, CEO (Ross Memorial Hospital)

Photography:http://www.interiorimages.ca

Total building area (sq. ft.): 37,700

Construction cost/sq. ft.: $298 (Canadian)

Total cost (excluding land): $11,247,744 (Canadian)


Ross Memorial Hospital is a community-based healthcare facility in the town of Lindsay, Ontario, at the heart of the recreation region of Kawartha Lakes. The current site of the hospital is close to the town center, adjacent to residential properties. Its existing vintage hospital buildings were dark, uninviting and, in many cases, had outlasted their useful life to support the technologic and advanced needs of clinical spaces.

As part of its redevelopment, the hospital acquired adjacent lands providing additional parking and building expansion opportunities. This redevelopment houses the programs for Ambulatory Care, Emergency, Complex Continuing Care, Mental Health, Rehabilitation, and Subacute Care. A new Main Entrance with retail space and an expanded Cafeteria provides amenity space to support this redeveloped facility.

The architecture and interior-design inspiration of the redevelopment came from the materials and colors evident in the surrounding region’s farmhouses, cottages, and landscape. The use of brick on the outside and two-tone wood cabinetry and wood-grain sheet-vinyl flooring on the inside add to the warmth of the patient units. At the same time, the use of these materials in modern, simplistic clean lines, as well as the use of glass curtain wall, reinforces the idea of a technologic and confident state-of-the-art hospital facility.

Improved access is provided with a clear identification for patient drop-off/pickup. The entrance also serves as a pivot for easy dispersion of people to the two-story Complex Continuing Care wing and expanded Acute West wing. This ability to separate traffic flows serves to reduce patient/visitor disorientation and assists with staff/service movement.

The intention of the newly constructed Complex Continuing Care wing is to provide physical, functional, and aesthetic amenities to support and improve longer patient stays and quality-of-life issues. All patient rooms on the two floors are located around the perimeter of the floor plate and organized around a centrally located staff station. All the patient beds are oriented to have views to the outside. To ensure a positive patient-care environment that can be seen by all patients, spaces such as lounges, dining, and activity rooms are located with access to a walkout courtyard or upper floor terrace.