This new facility brings together all of Georgian College’s health-related disciplines into a single, inter-disciplinary environment. This complex facility not only integrates a student learning commons, classrooms, offices and an aboriginal centre with a wide variety of traditional teaching spaces and laboratories, but also includes clinics open to the public from the school’s myriad health-care programs.
The design establishes a striking public face for the college while also creating, through the careful crafting of detail, form, and bright and welcoming spaces, a facility that elevates the level of public and teaching facilities at the college.
The new facility has a prominent public location within the city of Barrie and on the campus, framing the entry road into the College. The architecture has a distinctive public front that welcomes patrons of the facility into a naturally lit, double height lobby. Students enter from one side of the campus, ensuring that pedestrian and vehicular traffic flows do not interfere. A large mezzanine on the second floor acts as a student learning commons, which overlooks both the student entry and the public lobby, animating both areas with the educational experience of the College.
The LEED® Silver project employs a number of sustainable strategies, the most prominent of which is the introduction of three-storey spaces lit by clerestories, introducing extensive daylighting into the centre of a deceptively deep floor plate and contributing substantially to the bright and airy atmosphere of the building’s circulation spaces.