EXISTING SITE
On August 23, 1976, the Saint-Luc University Clinics welcomed their first patients.
A building typical of hospital architecture from the 1970s, it consists of a 9-storey hospital tower set on a 4-storey infrastructure.
Each floor is divided into four care units, twinned for hotel and medical distribution services. The basic infrastructure houses the operating room, the intensive care unit, the pharmacy, medical-technical diagnostic and treatment services, and general services (central administration, kitchen, medical records).
Level 00 corresponds to the roof level of the plinth on which the entrance pavilion is placed.
The rest of the slab is occupied by parking lots.
In addition to the hospital, the Faculty of Medicine of the Catholic University of Louvain extends eastward.
To the south, and to the right at the top of the photo, is the “Mémé” district of Simone and Lucien Kroll.
Developing their participatory methods, the architects in this district go against an institutional discipline for a more vernacular urban structure.
Lucien Kroll, architect of disorder, writes: “Repetition is crime. Diversity breeds creativity. The repetition of anesthesia. "
At the foot of the Mémé is the Alma metro, connecting the hospital to the center of Brussels.
The Carnoy district, a group of mainly student housing, is directly connected to the hospital base via a heroic footbridge spanning Avenue Mounier, an artery delimiting the hospital site to the south.
To the north of the site, the border with the Flanders region is wooded and rural. Hippocrates Avenue limits the site to this and is now the main access to the hospital.
LEFT
While the H2025 project is first and foremost a complete overhaul of the hospital building, it is also a major requalification of the Clinics district by the following means:
• Forge a link with the city by connecting the levels between them (artificial levels, the base, natural levels)
• Create a new reference level S03 (53.66) corresponding to the south west hall access
• Change polarity
- The west facade becomes the main facade
- To the south-west, the main entrance is created at S03 avenue Mounier and no longer on avenue Hippocrate (north)
- Logistical accesses are deported to the north on avenue Hippocrates
• Prioritize flows and routes
• Create a garden on the top level of the base, called Jardin des Cliniques
PEDESTAL
Currently, Avenue Mounier is enclosed, the Carnoy district creates a frontality there.
The hall projected at the southwest corner connects the 3 plinth levels and offers a very strong relationship with the outside.
The current plinth is partly demolished so as to form a stepped section, where each storey has an external relationship with the terraces of the plinth:
• The tile effect is erased
• The hospital is connected to its ground and to that of the campus
• The plinth turns into the ground.
Using an austere and mineral slab, our project proposes to humanize and vegetate these steps. Contour lines intertwine and add poetry to this space.
While remaining a high-performance technical platform, the base is transformed into a space in its own right: its roof becomes a public garden which opens at each level of the bleachers.
SKYLINE
In contrast to the current tower, a simple monotonous parallelepiped, our new tower project invents a skyline cutting out the sky.
Similar plans of each unit are covered with a very decomposed facade (bare and altimetry). Urbanity and humanity come together in the new hospital tower and in the neighborhood.
Our project aims to compose the new hospital tower as a piece of the city in order to make it an integral part.
The hospital becomes a mini city in itself with its heart (the hall) its buildings and its parks.
STRATIFICATION
Our project transforms the district through the stratification of the ground or the verticality and therefore influences a resonance at all scales:
• City-wide: a new skyline
• At the district level: soil stratification
• Hospital-wide: stratification of the facade
