Xiamen Humanity Maternity Hospital brings a precise design which successfully achieves a better professional service from both gynecologists and obstetrics. This efficiency improvement is explored through its unique form which makes childbirth and its related medical treatments positively memorable. The well-arranged curves of the building bring a closer feeling to the main atrium located in the inner space of each floor. From pre-delivery all the way to post-natal rehabilitation and childcare growth, Xiamen Humanity Maternity Hospital provides a full chain of services, becoming a live theatre performance which celebrates the ceremony of life.
Architizer chatted with Vincent Zhang from Lemanarc SA to learn more about this project.
Architizer: What inspired the initial concept for your design?
Vincent Zhang: Rational hospitals are normally rectangle shaped, due to easy adaptation to their modularity and flexible space units as well as for their underground parking system.
Yet life is never rectangular. Can those typical “sharp” exterior garden spaces and squares be interpreted as more “soft” experiences when different users approach them from different directions? Can a “sharp” rational grid system play together with “soft” edges? Are those junction spaces enemies for flexibility of a hospital or would they offer us more interesting “accidental” spaces for MDT, living spaces and garden corners? How to translate a big healing machine to a more human scale-oriented garden from outside to inside… These are phantom questions which constantly follow me when facing any hospital design situations.
© Lemanarc SA
What do you believe is the most unique or ‘standout’ component of the project?
Dancing with the grid to discover more possibilities for vital spaces, this is crucial to improve the process of healing lives.
© Lemanarc SA
What was the greatest design challenge you faced during the project, and how did you navigate it?
Maternity is not a disease. The greatest design challenge for this specific project was to create a space that worked for maternity, gynecology, inpatient, outpatient, and a central efficient med-tech part all in one. Knowing about logistical distribution as well as creating different experiences within the different pathways for different users.
© Lemanarc SA
© Lemanarc SA
How did the context of your project — environmental, social or cultural — influence your design?
The city of Xiamen is situated at the south of China which involves tropical weather conditions. The hospital needs a lot of air-conditioning installations, with a need for fresh air which is absorbed from the outside of the building. All those air absorbing holes are behind a metallic mesh which also offers a global sun shading canopy.
What is your favorite detail in the project and why?
Each small detail can change significantly or even reverse the global design…
© Lemanarc SA
© Lemanarc SA
In what ways did you collaborate with others, and how did that add value to the project?
It only took us two and a half years from winning the design competition to its building completion. This is quite short timing especially during Covid, each unexpected change urged for reaction capacity, each role intervention was quite a challenge… We had to work all the time in a very interactive way with our clients, LDIs, engineers and builders until the last minute.
© Lemanarc SA
Were any parts of the project dramatically altered from conception to construction, and if so, why?
The initial façade design contained some paintings spread through the metallic mesh. Due to cost control and the construction schedule being too fast, this extra layer was taken off by the builders for the time being. Perhaps one day they will want to do this again, we are always ready.
© Lemanarc SA
How have your clients responded to the finished project?
They like it more day by day. They also told me that they feel proud that their friends and patients keep telling them how much they like it.
© Lemanarc SA
How do you believe this project represents you or your firm as a whole?
The architecture for healing is just like medicine, situated among science, technology and art. The challenge of constantly thinking and discovering the myth of care and cure for each specific case represents very well Lemanarc’s destine.
© Lemanarc SA
Is there anything else important you’d like to share about this project?
Visit and experience it with your own eyes.
© Lemanarc SA
Team Members
Daniel Pauli, Cao Feng, Xia Jinling, Dong Weibin, Cristiano Sardinha & Casiana Kennedey.
For more on Xiamen Humanity Maternity Hospital, please visit the in-depth project page on Architizer.