In 2012, George Brown College, an urban community college in Toronto, built a waterfront campus for its school of health sciences. Representing a 40 percent expansion of the overall campus, the new 450,000-square-foot, $140-million building responds to rising demand for health-care professionals, in particular those who are preparing for a collaborative practice. By uniting the schools of Dental Health, Heath and Wellness, Health Management, and Nursing and creating strategic social spaces shared by all student bodies, the facility refutes the silo mentality that had kept these related departments from intersecting. Students traveling diverse paths now meet each other easily, build connections, and, in effect, teach one another.
Previously the four programs occupied a building in downtown Toronto that lacked common areas. To realize the client's vision for learning, the design team—KPMB Architects in a joint venture with Stantec Architecture—first consulted research on the pedagogy. For example, a 2001 study by Thomas Allen of MIT's Sloan School of Management concluded that collaboration requires, above all, proximity. “It was so simple that we laughed,” recalls KPMB principal Bruce Kuwabara, “but it's absolutely true.” Analysis also showed that learning often happens outside the classroom: students share information in casual conversation.
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