A Peaceful Goodbye

The Gies Family Centre is Waterloo Region’s fresh answer to end-of-life care

Alex Cyr

THE GIES FAMILY CENTRE occupies a rustic building on five acres of once-empty farmland. There’s an in-house hair salon, a spiritual room for visitors and an information centre. The most surprising thing about it? It’s a hospice facility, with 11 beds for those needing end-of-life care. In the mid-2010s, as the population continued to age and demand for hospice beds grew, Hospice Waterloo Region, a palliative care centre in Kitchener, Ontario, wanted to introduce beds for full-time residents and invited architects to pitch their designs. Laird Robertson and Doug McIntosh, partners at NEO Architecture, had never worked on a hospice facility before. So they visited care homes, many of which reminded them of airport hangars, lacking serenity and warmth. In response, the pair designed a cozy, barn-inspired hospice and won…

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Maclean's (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024

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