We have enjoyed working with the Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre (RVH) on multiple projects, including the Child and Youth Mental Health Program. The focus of this program is to provide mental health services, in addition to academic support, to high school students who are unable to attend regular classes due to anxiety or depression. Read more
In the late summer of 2015, Peter Pitseolak High School in Cape Dorset, Nunavut was destroyed by fire. It was a devastating setback for this tightly-knit community of 1,400 people, just two weeks into the new school year. Not only did this directly affect the 150 students and 22 staff members, but also the many community members and organizations that used the high school building for meetings and cultural events. Read more
According to studies and research by camh, one in five Canadians will experience a mental health problem in any given year, and by the age of 40, one in two will have, or will have had, a mental illness. These numbers are staggering. Read more
Healthcare facilities are not immune to hacking; a reality made painfully clear when last year’s WannaCry ransomware crippled organizations around the world, including healthcare facilities. And according to a 2017 Identity Theft Resource Center report, just over 25% of all data breaches occurred in the healthcare industry. Read more
Robert Boraks is a Director at Parkin Architects Limited, Visiting Scholar at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism at Carleton University, and a frequent guest speaker at international conferences where he shares his understanding of trends that will help shape correctional facility design here in Canada and around the world. Read more
There can be very interesting stories behind why we design the building features that we do. Design is sometimes a challenging profession as it can take many years to see the results of your efforts, particularly in healthcare design. But every so often, you see a tangible and welcome outcome from something that was a challenge identified by a client’s story. Recently, we toured a new client through the Brampton site of ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development and talked with staff about some of their stories. Read more
We are architects of social facilities; something we take seriously. Social facilities design requires the successful identification of naturally-occurring patterns, the development of new patterns, and the application of these to architecture. We believe that it is our responsibility to ensure our designs respond to the needs – personal, physical and emotional – of the users of the environments we design. Read more
