Innovative New Site Design

CAMH has worked with an award-winning team of architects to translate the Functional Program into a program for the transformation of the Queen Street site. The redeveloped site will be CAMH's central hub with inpatient and outpatient services, research, education and health promotion, university teaching, professional training and various community resources. The hub will be linked to a network of community-based satellites.

CAMH's goal is to change the institutional character of the site and physically integrate it with the surrounding neighbourhood. Existing streets will be extended through the site, creating new city blocks. This integration with the community is very important to address stigma long associated with the property and will improve and normalize the care environment for CAMH's clients.

the Urban Village

The institutional stigma related to the Queen Street site will be replaced with a real community setting for client care. Essentially, CAMH is seeking to de-institutionalize the type of care it provides. CAMH's new hub at the Queen Street site will be designed with a pattern of buildings, street, sidewalks, new shops and open spaces that will integrate with the surrounding neighbourhood and create an urban village. It will contain a mix of uses and activities, creating a safe, comfortable and welcoming place for both our clients and our neighbours in the Queen West community.

 

Pedestrian-friendly streetscapes and parks

Through the redevelopment project, the extension of the local street network will bring the CAMH property into the surrounding urban fabric. The new streets, and those surrounding the property will form a network that provides a number of routes for pedestrians, cyclists, transit and cars. The streets will be designed as typical urban neighbourhood streets, with careful attention paid to the creation of a safe and comfortable pedestrian realm. They will include trees, pedestrian-scale lighting and seating. In all cases, the streets will be lined up with the existing north-south running streets to the north of Queen Street West. CAMH and the City of Toronto developed and have agreed to a set of Urban Design Guidelines, that will govern the placement of street trees and lighting, the width of sidewalks and all of the other elements that combine to create a welcoming pedestrian environment.

 

 

The Master Plan identifies three sites for public open space, tentatively named Shaw Park, Adelaide Common East and Fennings Park. The public spaces have been located where groups of mature trees are found and where they reinforce the neighbourhood pattern of open space and green linkages. These public open spaces will be integrated with a green network throughout the precinct, ensuring that significant areas of mature trees are preserved and sufficient green space provided for clients.

In addition to the public open spaces, CAMH is intending to create private open spaces to protect significant stands of mature trees where they exist, and to provide some programmed open space for CAMH use. Also, the development blocks have been configured to preserve as many mature trees as feasible. Open space for CAMH use, including gardens and a greenhouse, will be located along the south side of the Adelaide Street extension, west of the eastern heritage building, in an area called Adelaide Common West.

Flexible buildings

CAMH's new buildings will be designed to be flexible to ensure that they can meet changing health care needs, and not become obsolete in 20 or 30 years, as the current buildings have. The CAMH buildings will be designed to accommodate a potentially changing palette of office, meeting and client living spaces and outpatient services.

Most new buildings in the urban village will be institutional or commercial buildings, between four and ten stories. The maximum heights within the redevelopment are governed by the site-specific zoning By-Law. Typically, the lowest heights will be in the areas directly adjacent to neighbouring houses (such as along the western boundary of our site), greater heights along Queen and Shaw streets, and the tallest buildings within the centre of the redevelopment.

The east-west orientation of the precinct will provide the opportunity for most buildings to enjoy a good south facing exposure for passive heat gains during the winter season. Buildings will be designed to maximize natural light and views. The many trees (existing and those that we will plant) will shade the buildings and the public spaces in the summer months.

History and the Heritage Wall

The 27 acres of land on the Queen Street site has been dedicated as space for treating mental illness for over 150 years, initially as the Provincial Lunatic Asylum, and CAMH is proposing to continue using it for the same purpose. CAMH’s plans include maintaining the walls around the Queen Street Site and two historic buildings as a connection to our history.

CAMH has executed a Heritage Easement Agreement with the City of Toronto to govern the long-term repair and maintenance of the wall. Repair and conservation work on the wall will be directed by the Heritage Conservation Strategy, which was developed by one of Toronto’s leading heritage architecture firms (ERA architects). The Western section of the wall will be repaired in conjunction with the construction of Phase 1A of the redevelopment.

The overall philosophy with respect to the wall is one of minimum intervention. We do not wish to modernize or alter the historical character of the wall. Instead, the plan is to effect repairs so that the wall will remain both stable and authentic for the future.

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