The Hospital For Sick Children is set to officially open its new collaborative research centre on September 17 after 10 years of planning and construction.
A report that ran on Global News states the $400-million tower is "intended to be an incubarot or innovative ideas," according to the hospital's head of research, Dr. Janet Rossant.
The 21-story Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning will "bring together the venerable hospitals’ 2,000-plus scientists under one roof after decades of being scattered in five different locations," Global News reports.
Architects worked with the hospital to design a space that prevented researchers from working in silos, instead favouring an approach that inspires collaboration. The hospital features "neighbourhood gathering spots" that are accessible from several floors and encourage meeting and mingling.
"[The architects] have built these mini atria in which people can come out of the lab, come into this space, sit down, have a coffee, talk to friends, have a small meeting," Dr. Rossant told Global on a tour of the new facility. "This is not just the most beautiful part of the building, but it really exemplifies what we wanted to achieve in the building."
The building will feature "state-of-the-art research labs for seven broad disciplines – among them genetics/genome biology and neurosciences/mental health," Global reports.
"We do it, research in the hospital, because we want to implement change. We want to see change that impacts on health," Rossant says.
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