Client: Bureau of Public Works of Bao’an District

Location: Shenzhen, China

Date: 2024

Type: Healthcare

Area: 96570 m2

Budget: Undisclosed

AZPML

Alejandro Zaera-Polo, Maider Llaguno-Munitxa, Ivaylo Nachev

Hubei ZCET

Minglu Wei, Yifan Wang, Qingqing Wei, Ying Zuo

Our proposal for the Shenzhen People’s Hospital in the GBAIC CITY proposes innovative solutions to update the typology of the general hospital.

The building is based on a vertical integration of services where the typical space typologies are occupying the most ideal locations. Vertical integration and compactness are crucial to ensure future flexibility of the structure.

The building is organized as a circulation loop which threads the Inpatient Lobby on the North and a Central Atrium on the South. Inside of the circulation loop we have located the more technology-driven functions, as the core of the organization. All the Outpatient Departments are attached to the loop as lumps that the people can easily access and that have their own waiting area. The loop is therefore naturally lit between the lobes. The building is structured as a 4-5 floor amoeba-like structure that expands from its technical core to occupy the site. The 21-storey Inpatient Tower, is located on the North end on the site, as the most prominent element of the complex on the Shenzhen skyline.

The Central Atrium will be accessible from an outpatient drop-off on Runqin Road on the East, and from a bridge over the Luotian Stream which links the new facility to the metropolitan transport station. Otherwise, a vehicular drop-off on the North, will serve the Inpatient Tower, and an additional one for the Accident and Emergency Department on the South end of the site.

The massing of the complex emphasizes the organic nature of the complex and that represents its medical purpose. The massing, which seeks to humanize the scale of the complex, appears as a cluster of smaller volumes with rounded corners, – the lobes containing the Outpatient.

Departments of which the Inpatient tower emerges as the main accent. We have made the tower into a squared plan in order to make it as slender as possible.

We propose to use the roof of the complex’s socle to locate a raised Medical Orchard which will be able to serve for the inpatients to sunbathe and exercise and for the outpatients and visitors to relax and wait. The Medical Orchard is located on the roof of the outpatient’s podium 22m above the street level, and will become a quiet and protected environment, undisturbed by acoustic intrusion and exposed to the sun. The Orchard will be designed also with an educational purpose where medicinal species will be planted and displayed with the scientific nomenclature, in the tradition of the botanical gardens and the Hortus Medicus.

Our cladding system seeks to unify all surfaces into a sleek surface which is easy to clean, and very durable. While the wall can be built using conventional methods, the fritted glass membrane will provide a consistent material finish to both the opaque and the transparent sections of the envelope. The “windows” in the surface (areas which are not fritted that allow visual continuity) have been designed as “stadium curve”, resembling the biconvex cylindrical capsules that associate to medicines in the popular imagination. The whiteness of the fritted surface will also resonate with the medical and health industry and will contribute to increase the albedo of the building and reduce heat island effects.