The first Ronald McDonald House opened in 1974 in Philadelphia, Pa., allowing parents to stay close to their hospitalized child or children. Since then, Ronald McDonald House Charities has implemented House programs around the world, including Winnipeg, Man.

In 2017, Ronald McDonald House Charities Manitoba (RMHMB) retained ft3 to design and build a new facility in Winnipeg. The concept of a home away from home, including the holistic health and well-being of the guest families, staff, and volunteers, guided the form and function of the new house during design. When families stay at RMHMB, feelings of serenity, security, and stimulation should ensue, like the emotions of being in your home, augmented by the  support of RMHC staff and volunteers.

Lowered rooflines and strategically cut voids in the building’s mass—resembling a series of townhouses—communicated a home away from home formally, harmonizing the new mid-rise to the scale and form of the surrounding duplexes and single residences. Window boxes, multi-level terraces, and a large interior courtyard underscore this concept further, contextualizing the home and its guests to the community.

Designing for play factored heavily into the new RMHMB as nurturing a child’s imagination adds to their healing and recovery. A two-story high play structure greets families on arrival, anchoring the building to the site. Meanwhile, a sensory Magic Room fully realizes this concept, showering children with light, colour, and sound while taking them outside of their recovery and into a space of innate joy and happiness.

Children’s play blocks inspired the design of the window boxes that frame each suite. These window boxes invoke cohesiveness between interior and exterior design elements (boxes appear as a ceiling treatment throughout the main floor’s living and dining spaces) and emphasize guests’ sense of place and relationship to the natural environment by facilitating views of nature and access to natural light.

Forty individual bedrooms with private washrooms (up from 14 in the original RMHMB house) occupy floors two, three, and four, with critical environment suites serving kidney or bone marrow transplant patients and their families (for post-transplant isolation). These larger suites on the second floor feature enhanced safety and infection controls, including a separate elevator, entry points, and dedicated Energy Recovery Ventilators.

The spatial arrangement and integration of program elements inside the house encourage movement, gathering, and healing while creating essential moments of community and wellness. Guest families can spend time in communal spaces like the kitchen, where preparing and eating meals together helps improve mental and physical well-being. Other spaces inside include a living room with a fireplace, a room for smudging, rooms for practicing yoga or watching movies, and amenity rooms with games and crafts.

The project reached completion in September 2022. Before the new house opened, RMHMB had to turn away over 358 families between 2019 and 2021. This project gave the organization an 186% increase in mission delivery, including supporting 490 families with 9,657 nights of accommodations and savings of $2.9 million in costly, out-of-pocket expenses within the first year.

For more about how the Ronald McDonald House organization is such an important support to families, please visit https://www.rmhcmanitoba.org/.