The award is the highest honor bestowed by the ACHA in recognition of a significant body of work of lasting influence on the theory and practice of healthcare architecture.
Eb Zeidler’s first project before immigrating to Canada, the Rontgen Institute in Germany, sparked his interest in hospital design. While his works in healthcare are primarily visible throughout Canada and the United States, the effects of his achievements have resonated beyond North America.
From 1951 until 1967, Eb Zeidler and his partner, Jim Craig had designed many hospital projects throughout southern Ontario. In 1967, the firm was awarded the job of designing the new hospital and schools of medicine and nursing within the new McMaster University Health Sciences Centre in Hamilton. When this building opened, its design ignited healthcare architecture in Canada and it attracted visits by architects and healthcare workers from around the world.
The building was revolutionary in several ways to match the radically new curriculum of the founding doctors—it was only four-levels high. The entire building uses a long-span, interstitial space composed of steel trusses to provide for easy, economical change and the internal environment was colourful and playful in contrast to the typical hospital’s drab appearance.
Other healthcare projects that benefited from the pioneering concepts that began at McMaster includes three New Brunswick hospitals – the Saint John Regional Hospital, the Detroit Receiving Hospital and the Walter C. Mackenzie HSC. This hospital introduced the atrium to healthcare projects in Canada and was refined in subsequent Zeidler projects such as the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore, the Princess Margaret Hospital, and the Hospital for Sick Children and Sunnybrook’s Clinical Services Wing, all in Toronto. The use of the atrium in these buildings is partially a response to the harsh Canadian climate as well as the need to bring sunlight and greenery into the hospital’s interior, healing environment.
