St Vincent’s Heather

Providence Health Care is creating a new 13-story building that will include 240 long-term care beds and services and support for seniors in Vancouver, Canada. Once complete, St Vincent’s Heather (SVH) will replace aging care facilities elsewhere in the city. 

The long-term care beds will be configured as 20 “households,” with each having 12 residents in single-bed rooms. There will also be the shared social and recreational spaces that are usually found in a home, such as a dining room, living room, and an activity space. 

Couples and families will be able to stay together via connecting doors, and each bedroom will have a wheelchair-accessible ensuite bathroom. In terms of services, there will also be an adult day program, a community hall, a faith/sacred space, a restaurant, an exercise and therapy area, dental and primary-care services, and a childcare facility for up to 37 young ones. 

Outside, there will be green space, walking routes, and a planned garden. Climate resilience is a key design consideration and has been embedded into the design process for the new facility. SVH is one of the first facilities in British Columbia to fully carry out the new Climate Resilience Guidelines for BC Health Facility Planning & Design. 

Our team first carried out a climate risk assessment during business planning, followed by a resilience review to set design requirements to guide the detailed design process. This proactive design process has enabled key climate-resilient strategies in the early stages of design. 

These included a combination of a high-performing envelope and an HVAC system designed for future summer temperatures, patient control, and a flexible ventilation system to enable natural ventilation to balance energy for heating and cooling; critical equipment to be above flood levels to avoid damage during extreme rainfall; and an emergency refuge, along with critical spaces connected to 72 hours of backup power in case of a prolonged regional power outage. 

The building incorporated energy modelling from an early stage to help guide the selection of the mechanical system to ensure 
that all the project energy and carbon goals were achieved.