The walls are now fully up on the Keenan Research Centre and the
Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, designed by Diamond + Schmitt and being built by Eastern Construction, bringing the $100-million project one step closer to its scheduled summer completion for a Spring, 2011 opening.
"We clad the west wall in glass," says project leader Matt Smith. "So from Victoria Street, you'll be able to see the inner workings of the buildings. One of the reasons we clad the whole building in glass was to create a whole new transparency and linkage between what's going on in the building and the public." The theory is reminiscent of
KPMB's work with the National Ballet School's Jarvis Street campus.
Smith says that the older parts of St. Michael's Hospital,
founded in 1892 in response to that year's diptheria epidemic, are inward-looking, which was the style in the 1960s, when most of the building was built.
The new centre, one of six chosen by the
Li Ka Shing Foundation as a centre of excellence, will bring together the teaching and research facilities in the hospital, in the hope of speeding the process of getting discoveries into practise.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Matt Smith
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