2025 Prix du XXe siècle | Royal Architectural Institute of Canada

 

2025 Prix du XXe siècle

Yorkton Psychiatric Centre, 1964
Yorkton,
SK
Award Category: 
Prix du XXe siècle
Izumi Arnott and Sugiyama


Text by Bernard Flaman, SAA, FRAIC, Prix du XXe siècle expert panel member

Kiyoshi Izumi’s design for the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre draws on his analysis of a predecessor: the Saskatchewan Hospital at Weyburn. When that psychiatric treatment facility opened in 1921, it was the largest building in the British Commonwealth. Izumi made extensive analysis of the Saskatchewan Hospital’s long, crowded, hard-surfaced corridors. The Yorkton Psychiatric Centre, with its smaller treatment areas, short corridors, and communal areas filled with natural light, can be viewed as the anti-Weyburn. It also reflects Izumi’s keen interest in better understanding the perception of psychiatric patients, which prompted him to experiment with LSD under the supervision of psychiatric researchers Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer. “The object was to understand some of the experiences and problems of the mentally ill, so these problems could be considered in the building design,” he wrote in his 1970 article “LSD and Architectural Design.”
 
Yorkton’s sloped ceilings in the communal areas and extensive use of wood ceilings create a warm atmosphere and recognize the need for acoustic control to prevent echoes from disturbing patients. The design elements of the patients’ rooms were developed through models and incorporate many nuanced features. Most obvious is the bay window, which is obliquely angled to avoid reflections at night that could disturb a patient. Traditional closets that might generate fearful thoughts about what they contain were avoided in favour of a storage area at the head of the bed, behind the patient’s pillow. Controllable lighting and a natural wood ceiling contribute to an inviting atmosphere. 
 
Born in Vancouver to Japanese immigrant parents, Izumi is the earliest known Canadian architect of Japanese descent. Although his parents and two siblings were interned following the 1942 introduction of Canada’s War Measures Act, he avoided the BC internment camps and settled in Regina, with the aid of its small Japanese community. Izumi graduated from the School of Architecture at the University of Manitoba in 1948, receiving the Pilkington Travel Scholarship and later an RAIC scholarship for graduate studies at MIT in Boston.
 
Taking advantage of postwar economic expansion, Izumi bolstered the development of modernist and civic architecture in Saskatchewan. He partnered with his former classmate Gordon Arnott and structural engineer James Sugiyama to open Izumi Arnott and Sugiyama. With Izumi’s design sensitivities, Arnott’s business skills, and Sugiyama’s in-house structural expertise, the team flourished and was responsible for many important civic buildings in Saskatchewan during its 15-year existence (1954-1969).
 
In Regina, the firm was responsible for a cultural hat trick: the expanded Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Regina Public Library Central Branch, and the Saskatchewan Centre of the Arts (now Conexus Arts Centre.) At the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, the firm created the second master plan that guided the postwar expansion of the campus, including Marquis Hall, the W.P. Thompson Biology Building, and the Western College of Veterinary Medicine. 
 
Izumi Arnott and Sugiyama designed all of the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre’s furniture and employed durable, long-life-cycle materials such as Estevan brick and terrazzo flooring, which became a hallmark of their work of the 1950s and 60s.
 
Jury Comment(s): 
Bernard Flaman, SAA, FRAIC: The Yorkton Psychiatric Centre represents Kiyoshi Izumi’s resilience and perseverance, and also his incredible talent as an early modernist architect in Canada. The nuanced grouping of buildings that are the former treatment units were designed not just with the long list of patient needs in mind, but are also sensitive to the climate and landscape. The material palette is simple, beautiful and durable and offers clues to contemporary designers who are striving for longer material life cycles and greater sustainability.
 
Dr. Inderbir Singh Riar, BA, M.Arch, PhD: Kiyoshi Izumi’s Yorkton Psychiatric Centre is a rare and inspiring example of a postwar Canadian architect not imposing architecture as total solution to healthcare but negotiating the realms of design, medicine, and science to discover humane forms suited to treatment. Izumi’s experiments with LSD in order to approximate psychiatric patients’ perceptions was on the one hand a somewhat naïve attempt at approximating the mystery and difficulty of the mind and on the other a bold desire to enter another realm of consciousness in order to perceive a richer and more complex world. Izumi’s unity of thought and action arose from a firm belief he articulated in 1948, as a University of Manitoba student, in a “democratic planning process” that required objectivity and acceptance of all points of view. Izumi fulfilled this early ethical creed in the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre by respecting patients, honouring health workers, and above all creating a building destined to last.
 
Dr. Dustin Valen, BEDS, MArch, PhD: Designed by one of the first Japanese-Canadian architects in this country, the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre is a triumph over the racist attitudes and policies enacted by Canada’s federal government. Izumi’s work also testifies to the growing postwar alliance between science and architecture, and points to architects’ key role in humanizing the built environment of Canada’s rapidly expanding welfare state. His sensitive approach to hospital design remains a model for how architects can encourage patient-centered approaches to healthcare by paying special attention to the emotional and physical needs of hospital users.

2025 Expert Panel 
Click for full version: 
Present day building
PHOTO - Bernard Flaman
Notes / Sketches
Collection of Gordon Izumi
1964 exterior of treatment unit
University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, Henry Kalen Fonds, PC 219 (A.05-100), BOX 174, FOLDER 900, ITEM 9. PHOTO: HENRY KALEN
1964 Interior of common room
University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, Henry Kalen Fonds, PC 219 (A.05-100), BOX 174, FOLDER 900, ITEM 10. PHOTO: HENRY KALEN
1964 Interior of treatment area
University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, Henry Kalen Fonds, PC 219 (A.05-100), BOX 174, FOLDER 900, ITEM 4. PHOTO: HENRY KALEN
Kiyoshi Izumi at the official opening of the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre
Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, Public Photo Services 64-614-17 
Photo : Neil Crichton