With 114 rooms, the new University Children’s Hospital Zurich is the largest healthcare facility for children and adolescents in Switzerland. Located in a residential neighborhood, the roughly CHF761 million (US$887 million) project comprises two buildings: an acute care hospital and a research and teaching facility.
The acute care hospital functions like a town, with the medical specialties as neighborhoods. On each of the hospital’s three floors, a central main street runs past the green courtyard, providing orientation and allowing sunlight into the building.
The patient rooms are located on the hospital’s top floor. Each room has been designed like a wooden cottage with its own roof—providing both privacy and a view of the outdoors. The staggered rooms have rooftops at varying inclines, emphasizing the singular identity of each patient. The rooms also offer enough space for parents to spend the night with their children.
The hospital’s abundant daylight, outdoor views, and biophilic design aim to contribute to healing, according to a statement from the design architect, Herzog & de Meuron.
The white, cylindrical teaching and research building features an open, five-story atrium in the center. The research fields are arranged around this central core to encourage collaboration and communication. The building has one 320-seat lecture hall and two 100-seat seminar rooms, as well as study areas. With movable walls, the lecture/seminar rooms, lobby, and café can be reconfigured to form one large event space that can accommodate 670 people. On the floors above, research laboratories and accompanying offices have unobstructed views of the surrounding landscape.
Boulders unearthed during construction have been placed in and around the buildings. The project team also planted over 250 trees.
On the building team:
Design architect: Herzog & de Meuron
Architect of record: ARGE KISPI (Herzog & de Meuron and Gruner)
Electrical engineer: Amstein + Walthert
Plumbing engineer: Ingenieurbüro Riesen
Structural engineer: ZPF Ingenieure
Building automation and smart building: Jobst Willers Engineering
Construction manager: Gruner
Related Stories
| Apr 12, 2011
Mental hospital in Boston redeveloped as healthcare complex
An abandoned state mental health facility in Boston’s prestigious Longwood Medical Area is being transformed into the Mass Mental Health Center, a four-building mixed-use complex that includes a mental health day hospital, a clinical and office building, a medical research facility for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a residential facility.
| Mar 17, 2011
Perkins Eastman launches The Green House prototype design package
Design and architecture firm Perkins Eastman is pleased to join The Green House project and NCB Capital Impact in announcing the launch of The Green House Prototype Design Package. The Prototype will help providers develop small home senior living communities with greater efficiency and cost savings—all to the standards of care developed by The Green House project.
| Mar 14, 2011
Renowned sustainable architect Charles D. Knight to lead Cannon Design’s Phoenix office
Cannon Design is pleased to announce that Charles D. Knight, AIA, CID, LEED AP, has joined the firm as principal. Knight will serve as the leader of the Phoenix office with a focus on advancing the firm’s healthcare practice. Knight brings over 25 years of experience and is an internationally recognized architect who has won numerous awards for his unique contributions to the sustainable and humanistic design of healthcare facilities.
| Mar 11, 2011
Renovation energizes retirement community in Massachusetts
The 12-year-old Edgewood Retirement Community in Andover, Mass., underwent a major 40,000-sf expansion and renovation that added 60 patient care beds in the long-term care unit, a new 17,000-sf, 40-bed cognitive impairment unit, and an 80-seat informal dining bistro.
| Mar 11, 2011
Research facility added to Texas Medical Center
Situated on the Texas Medical Center’s North Campus in Houston, the new Methodist Hospital Research Institute is a 12-story, 440,000-sf facility dedicated to translational research. Designed by New York City-based Kohn Pedersen Fox, with healthcare, science, and technology firm WHR Architects, Houston, the building has open, flexible labs, offices, and amenities for use by 90 principal investigators and 800 post-doc trainees and staff.
| Mar 11, 2011
Mixed-income retirement community in Maryland based on holistic care
The Green House Residences at Stadium Place in Waverly, Md., is a five-story, 40,600-sf, mixed-income retirement community based on a holistic continuum of care concept developed by Dr. Bill Thomas. Each of the four residential floors houses a self-contained home for 12 residents that includes 12 bedrooms/baths organized around a common living/social area called the “hearth,” which includes a kitchen, living room with fireplace, and dining area.
| Mar 3, 2011
HDR acquires healthcare design-build firm Cooper Medical
HDR, a global architecture, engineering and consulting firm, acquired Cooper Medical, a firm providing integrated design and construction services for healthcare facilities throughout the U.S. The new alliance, HDR Cooper Medical, will provide a full service design and construction delivery model to healthcare clients.
| Mar 1, 2011
New survey shows shifts in hospital construction projects
America’s hospitals and health systems are focusing more on renovation or expansion than new construction, according to a new survey conducted by Health Facilities Management magazine and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE). In fact, renovation or expansion accounted for 73% of construction projects at hospitals responding to the survey.
| Feb 22, 2011
HDR Architecture names four healthcare directors
Four senior professionals in HDR Architecture’s healthcare program have been named Healthcare directors.
