Explore how mass timber can transform healthcare design—improving healing, sustainability, and performance in modern hospitals.

We need to get more from our healthcare buildings – they not only need to better heal us, they need to help heal our planet and tackle some of the social and environmental determinants of health. Squeezed, standardized and somnambulant is not where we should be going with our new hospitals!

Mass timber is emerging as a viable alternative to conventional (read steel, concrete) structural systems for larger-scale high-rise buildings.  Recent innovations in manufacturing, design, material availability, engineering and safety testing are coming together to open up institutional buildings to the structure that grows in trees.

Healthcare is, quite understandably, conservative and cautious.  Innovation needs to be proven with evidence.  Our major healthcare buildings are born from complex decade-long processes and are expensive investments.  None of these contextual factors favours experimentation.  This study is a joint effort to do some of the leg-work for healthcare clients and their designers to test-fit mass timber and acute inpatient care.  The team includes KPMB Architects, PHSA (Provincial Health Services Authority of BC), Fast + Epp, Smith + Andersen, Resource Planning Group, CHM Fire, Hanscomb, AMB Planning and EllisDon.

The outcome is a test-design for a 200+bed mass timber inpatient building suited to a medium to large Canadian hospital.  We look at structure, schedule, cost, lifecycle carbon, building code, infection control and biophilic design to guide and evaluate the development of the proposed building.

Objectifs d'apprentissage :

• What are the fundamental drivers for the building structure used in healthcare buildings?
• If we consider mass timber (MT), what assets, limitations and concerns need to be addressed?
• Review in-progress work on a joint research project to study the use of mass timber for an inpatient tower for a Canadian acute care hospital.
• Discuss opportunities and challenges proceeding from the study including some preliminary comparative costs, scheduling observations & LCA analysis.