Steel bridge keeps Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital connected

The steel frame for an enclosed pedestrian bridge was recently hoisted into place in downtown Toronto, connecting St. Michael’s main hospital building with the new Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

TORONTO

The steel frame for an enclosed pedestrian bridge was recently hoisted into place in downtown Toronto, connecting St. Michael’s main hospital building with the new Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

The bridge will be a physical and symbolic link between the research and education work taking place in the new building on the north side of Shuter Street and the patient care on the south side, the hospital said.

“The institute was designed specifically to bring together researchers, educators and clinicians in one facility to encourage the rapid transfer of research findings from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside,” said St. Michael’s CEO Bob Howard.

“The bridge will be a constant reminder to researchers and health-care workers that we have to open up those pathways to discovery, knowledge and healing.”

The bridge’s tubular steel frame, about 18 metres long and 4 metres in diameter, was manufactured and assembled by Gartner Steel and Glass in Germany, shipped across the Atlantic to New York and then trucked to Toronto.

It was hoisted into place by C.W. Smith Crane Services Ltd.

The hospital said workers now will spend about six weeks installing 65 curved glass panels specially designed to be suspended over the street. Each panel consists of three layers — a single 10-mm-thick pane of clear tempered glass and two 8-mm panes covered with a solar film to provide shading.

Each pane of glass is a curved parallelogram, as opposed to a curved rectangle, so that the joints in the glass follow the white steel structure behind them.

Both the bridge and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute were designed by Toronto architect Jack Diamond, a principal with Diamond + Schmitt Architects.

The institute will be composed of two buildings that are physically integrated but have distinct programs: the Keenan Research Centre and the Li Ka Shing International Centre for Healthcare Education.

The facility is partially occupied. Construction is expected to be substantially completed by the end of the year. The general contractor is Eastern Construction Co.