A HEALING ENVIRONMENT

The Kinderspital Zürich by Herzog & de Meuron is designed like a tiny town with medical facilities that are like neighbourhoods with squares and connecting streets.

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Located in Zürich-Lengg, at the foot of a hill known as Burghölzli, the new University Children's Hospital is adjacent to other hospital buildings from several eras and is the largest facility for children and adolescents in Switzerland. It consists of two buildings: the acute-care hospital and the research and teaching facility.

The acute-care hospital to the south consists of a three-storey concrete frame with intricate wooden infills that blend into the landscape. The interior functions like a town: the medical specialities are neighbourhoods with squares and connecting streets. On each of the three floors, a central main street runs past various green courtyards that provide orientation and bring daylight into the building. The patients' rooms on the roof are like individual cottages.

AREA OF RESEARCH

Teaching and research facilities are housed in a white cylindrical building to the north, with an open, five-storey atrium in the centre. The fields of research are arranged around this core of exchange. Underneath, three lecture halls surrounded by seminar rooms and study areas for students are embedded in the topography of the sloping terrain.

"The curved, three-storey main façade, with its endearing small-scale wooden houses and variously sloped roofs, offers a friendly and warm welcome to young patients and their families.