Shenzhen Xinming Hospital project is a medical campus that interweaves and blurs the line between architecture and landscape.  Originally hilly and rural; Shenzhen is currently in the midst of an economic boom that is transforming the once hilly agrarian landscape into flat urban sprawl.  Situated in a clearing north of a forest park and surrounded on 3 sides by built environment, the Xinming Hospital architecture acknowledges the agrarian past and looks forward to the future.  It is a framework of landforms that transition from the natural to the built environment, making nature an integral part of the human experience. 

 

Open air courtyards, sky gardens, roof gardens, ambulatory gardens, outdoor balconies, outdoor plazas, reflecting pools, natural ventilation and natural day lighting has been carefully choreographed to allow the patients, the staff and the visitors a harmonious connection with nature.  To maximize and preserve open spaces for outdoor activities, the medical functions have been interlaced and stacked efficiently within and above the lifted landscape.  Vehicular parking has been relegated to an underground parking structure.

 

Teaching, Research & Development will be part of the curriculum for this hospital therefore the architecture can be an integral part of the educational endeavor.  Analogous to the idea that research and teaching is a process of discovery; the conference center is an incubator for discovery in perpetuity.  The skin of the conference center is a series of continuous ribbons forming a brise soleil that twists and turns so to reveal the interior to the exterior and vice versa as well as reacting to the dynamic solar orientation.  The buildings are also oriented on an east-west axis to allow for maximum natural day-lighting and, with the combined use of shading, minimize solar heat gain in the summer. 

 

As a center of healing, Shenzhen Xinming Hospital provides a sanctuary for its patients and a catalyst for the mending of its environment.