CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE
Our goal was to not just create a hospital in Shanghai but to create an environment that synthesizes traditional Chinese medicine and western practice into a cohesive campus. The layout of our rehabilitation hospital is a formal derivative of traditional Chinese spatial hierarchies arranged along a journey. The form is then fragmented by dissecting pathways that create ecological porosity while simultaneously blending the strong Chinese inward focus with the outward focus of western culture. This formal gesture not only enables pedestrian flow throughout the site but is also symbolic of the convergence of two different cultures and their respective healing practices. We believe both cultures have something to offer medically and architecturally and the molding of the two will be instrumental in the rehabilitation hospital’s success as a hub for medical tourism.
JOURNEY
Another important aspect of our design was the patient’s journey, a journey which we elected to occur along a curving green band that penetrates the site. By choosing this band as the pathway for this journey we were able to fragment the form of our building in a way that highlights the radio-concentric layout of the site and further ties the complex to the SIMZ district as a whole. From there we inverted the typical spatial progression of the Chinese home. Instead of starting with public space and progressing to private space, our journey moves the opposite direction. This allows patients to find themselves in a private setting while gradually being re-assimilated back into society. To create this sense of journey the building starts to break apart and open up to the surrounding context as you move further along the green band.