The Globe and Mail

At some point in life, just about everyone spends some time in a dwelling designed for temporary use. It could be a bunkhouse at camp, or a university dormitory, or a resort or business hotel. It might be a hospital room. For those afflicted by mental illness or substance abuse, it could be one of the three new transitional-care buildings soon to go on line at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). Like dorms, hotels and every other kind of temporary lodging done with a view to art as well as utility, these low-rise structures provided strong challenges to the architects who crafted them - challenges the designers have met with imagination and deep sensitivity for future residents. Parts of the first phase in the $382-million overhaul of CAMH's historic campus on Queen Street West, these handsome buildings have been designed by a consortium of three well-known Toronto firms: Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg, Montgomery Sisam, and Kearns Mancini. These architects were given an interesting mandate: to create shelter for patients who are past the acute stages of their illnesses, but not yet ready to go out on their own. The results are three-storey brick and steel blocks that more closely resemble small, modern, well-made apartment buildings than the dull, glowering psychiatric hospitals of yesteryear.