One bench family, three ways to sit in it

The Jim Pattison Acute Care Tower opened to patients at the end of May 2026 with 388 beds, a new emergency department, twenty-five operating rooms, maternity and cardiac intensive care, and a rooftop helipad. It is one phase of a redevelopment that has been reshaping the Sapperton site for years.

Hospital grounds get furnished for a harder set of needs than a park. The people using them are recovering, waiting for news, on a break from a long shift, or walking a prescribed distance for the first time since surgery. Almost nobody is there by choice.

The specification worth copying

What stands out at Royal Columbian is not variety. It is restraint. The site took the Bayview family and very little else, but it took that family in three seating configurations: with armrests, without armrests, and backless.

Those three serve three different people. Armrests are what let someone push themselves up to standing, which matters to an older or post-operative patient. Armrests are also what makes a seat unusable for someone who needs more width than the arms allow. And a backless bench is what somebody transfers onto sideways from a wheelchair.

A run of identical benches works for whoever that bench was designed around. Three configurations of the same bench works for everyone, and still reads as one decision on site. The same thinking runs through the tables, where a standard Bayview picnic table and a wheelchair-accessible one sit together so a patient in a chair and a visitor in a seat can eat at the same table.

What went in

• Bayview Bench 6ft: With armrests, the push-up point for standing
• Bayview Bench without Armrests 6ft: Unobstructed width, same bench, same sightline
• Bayview Backless Bench 6ft: Side transfer from a wheelchair
• Bayview Wheelchair Accessible Picnic Table 6ft: Specified with the standard table so groups are not split
• Bayview Picnic Table 6ft: The everyday table for staff breaks
• Modena Curved Top Three Stream Recycling Station: Sorting where people are, not back of house
• Beselt Square Waste Receptacle: Quick to service on a site with constant traffic