Herzog & de Meuron and Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects have been announced as winners of an international competition to design one of Denmark’s largest hospitals: Nyt Hospital Nordsjælland. Selected ahead of six other practices, including BIG and C.F. Møller, Herzog & de Meuron’s nature-inspired proposal will provide the New North Zealand Hospital with a 124,000 square meter facility that serves 24 medical departments and provides over 660 beds.
“The hospital organically reaches out into the wide landscape. Simultaneously its soft, flowing form binds the many components of the hospital,” described the architects. “It is a low building that fosters exchange between staff and patients, and it has a human scale despite its very large size.”
A response to the surrounding Danish landscape, the undulating structure over comes the restrictions of conventional, multi-story hospitals by creating a low-rise, flexible environment that connects patients to nature.
“The plan is the marriage of two seemingly contradictory goals: the desire for a large central garden and the necessity for short internal connections. The result is an organic cross shape that permits the interior garden to become a flowing space. A central hall underneath the garden is characterized by four round courtyards. The hospital pulsates from here.”
“Large connected areas, the repetitive arrangement of the interior courtyards, and uniform room sizes offer a high degree of flexibility. Later changes of functions can be easily realized.”
“We are very happy to have been awarded the New North Zealand Hospital in Hillerød. Together with the hospital’s representatives, a project was developed demonstrating that architectural ambition and functionality can come together in a hospital. The choice of the jury is a seminal sign to architects and the entire health-care sector: low, flat hospital buildings can be better integrated in the city or the countryside than the high-rises structures that were often realized in the last decades.”
Completion is slated for 2020. Stay tuned for more images and information.