Grau

The choice to locate the new university hospital on Ile de Nantes, in the heart of the city, is a strong decision that relies on the ability and interest to concentrate the city’s major services, previously relegated to the center’s margins, at the very heart of the city. This is the challenge of the renewal of the city.
We participated with the winning team in the competition for the new hospital of Nantes. Our role was to propose a structure that was integrated to the city fabric. The dimension of the CHU is that of an urban neighborhood but logistically it works as a big machine. In the proposal the hospital shifts from a building to a masterplan : the new hospital center forms an urban structure that stimulates the urban development of the island, like an urban locomotive.
This structure draws its urban qualities from the elements of existing powerful territories that are the Loire, and the exceptional natural and cultural landscape that it constitutes, and the landscape figure defined in the Plan of Transformations of Marcel Smets and uapS.