By Healthcare Facilities Today

SickKids Research Institute’s mission is to improve the health of children, but the hospital-based research center was experiencing its own set of growing pains. The Toronto-based organization had grown into Canada’s largest hospital-based child health research institute with six locations, more than 200 principal investigators, and a staff of nearly 2,000 people, according to a story on the Healthcare Design website. 

“We were at risk of losing scientists because we didn’t have the facilities and we were busting out at the seams,” Dr. Mike Salter, head of neurosciences and mental health at SickKids and associate chief of science strategy at SickKids Research Institute, said in the article. “Although people were collaborating, it wasn’t optimal.”

The answer was a $400 million project featuring a 778,000-square-foot tower in downtown Toronto with a pedestrian bridge that connects the research center and hospital. The new building, which spans nearly half a city block, has room to bring everyone together. 

To accommodate the 240 research groups and bring everyone together under one roof, the building needed to go vertical, rising 22 stories. 

The result could have been an isolated high-rise with little interaction among staff. But the project team wanted the building to reflect the transformation of biomedical sciences from individual researchers working in their own labs to teams of researchers with diverse backgrounds collaborating on big challenges, the article said.

“The concept of putting everyone together was not just to have a physical space, but how to use space to promote collegiality and interaction,” Salter said in the article.

Read the article.