Zhejiang University School of Medicine’s, Zhejiang University Medical Center, was profiled among other significant projects in this annual international showcase.
A replacement hospital encompassing more than 1 million sf on a dense urban site, ZUMC, in Hangzhou, China, features 600 inpatient beds, a state-of-the-art surgery suite, ambulatory clinics, and comprehensive support services—advancing ZUMC’s legacy of leadership in quality healthcare and education and housing healthcare’s most advanced technologies and complex functions with efficiency and grace in a human-centered environment. It also celebrates the natural beauty and lushness of Hangzhou, a temperate “garden city” renowned for its history of artistic and intellectual refinement.
The Center’s human-centered focus manifests in abundant natural light and views and, notably, in the integration of “spaces for people” throughout the facility, including a number of gardens and courtyards enhancing the healing environment for patients, families, and staff. The largest of these spaces, a weather-protected “urban living room,” provides thousands of patients and their families with convenient access to shops, cafés, gardens, and outdoor seating. A large garden on the site, featuring century-old trees preserved in a courtyard, functions as a vast outdoor atrium, providing light, air, and visual orientation for vertical circulation, and hospital departments at the courtyard’s edges. Placement of the hospital tower away from the street edge creates a low pedestrian scale; its positioning on the site’s north side maximizes sunlight to the central garden. All patient rooms enjoy south-facing windows. Inviting grounds and entryways project a civic presence and signify the institution’s commitment to community.
