Ile de Nantes' New Hospital Complex | ART & BUILD Architect

Currently undergoing an economical and demographical boom, the Greater Nantes area is consolidating its growth with ambitious new urban infrastructure projects. The new CHU or University Hospital Centre on Nantes Island will actively signal the region’s development with the creation of a new centre of excellence.
The Nantes CHU will be both a hospital ‘for the city and of the city’, contributing to urban life on a daily basis. The design team was inspired by two primary concerns; firstly the creation of an open and welcoming facility, secondly, the catalysis of future development of Nantes Island and beyond.
The new hospital will be markedly different from the oppressively over-scaled ‘cathedral hospitals’ of the 20th century. On the contrary, it will be willfully accessible and reassuring through its design. The CHU will establish a structural framework which installs quality public space as a vector for resolving urban, landscape and zoning issues. The city fabric is extended, engaging the Loire estuary and opening towards the Metacentre, condensing the gestures of its urban intentions around the heart of the hospital facilities to form an urban campus irrigated and enriched by a system of gardens, squares and promenades. Drawing inspiration from the figurative aspects of Nantes’ projected greenscaping, the hospital underpins the metropolis’s identity and breathes new diversity into the city fabric.