Foshan, China

Located in Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, with a total GFA of about 380,000㎡, the Midea Heyou International Hospital designed by BAI Design International has a planned inpatient capacity of 1,500 beds and a daily outpatient capacity of up to about 6,500 people.

The hospital serves as a medical center for the city and its surrounding areas in the future, targeting the whole population, applicable to the whole life cycle, and covering the whole medical spectrum.

Midea Heyou International Hospital has recently been awarded a 2022 International Architecture Awards Honorable Mention by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

The waterways and mountains near the site not only witness the historical and cultural context but also coexist with today’s urban life.

The design is inspired by these waterways and landscape, from which the architects wanted to create a garden hospital that coexists with nature.

Nurture and growth are some of the most fascinating topics in nature.

The main purpose of the project is to let the building grow out of the conventional framework of the city and to create a unique experience, like visiting a public health garden.

The main façade of the building unfolds along the water to its south, as a drop of water rises from the surface, creating a new dialogue between the building and the landscape, and establishing an emotional and cultural connection.

The façade system adopts the high-tech approach of dia-grid structure, and its unique appearance brings recognition, in line with its iconic role in the medical and health sector.

A variety of developed technical means and materials from domestic and abroad are adopted to reduce energy consumption, creating a true zero-carbon energy-saving urban communal room where energy-saving and health care strategies co-exist.

The roof is integrated with the curtain wall system converting photovoltaic/solar energy, signifying the idea of technology going back to nature while balancing part of the building’s energy consumption.

The entrance hall is a “public health communal room of the city” that fully integrates new construction technology and energy-saving strategies.

In terms of this large-scale building, the designers thought about the interior space in an urban scale, making it part of the city.

Using an inside-outside design approach, the designers wanted to present an open, shared and health-oriented urban public communal space.

The Medical Mall will become a trend in the development of hospitals in the future.

While ensuring that the medical function itself is safe and forward-looking, the designers wanted to weaken the boundaries and make the medical building more friendly, accessible, and integrated with the city and people’s lives.

Every space has a great psychological power that can influence mental well-being, based on the belief that we can improve the therapeutical function of the architecture by introducing biophilic design.

The masterplan introduces the philosophy of traditional Chinese gardens, with each building facing the central courtyard garden, giving a sense of enclosure, connecting different medical functions and distributing pedestrian flow, while also unfolding horizontal and vertical landscape corridors, skylights, and multiple levels of sky gardens.

The spatial planning adopts horizontal and vertical landscape axis to open up views and create a main medical corridor with green axis as visual guides, making the large medical building block more accessible, and activating the healing power of the space at the same time.

The entrance lobby introduces sunlight and blue sky, and under the guidance of a green corridor, it connects the outpatient area, medical technology area, and inpatient area.

Based on the “traffic distribution” strategy of transportation buildings and the “multiple ground floor” strategy of commercial buildings, the designers arranged a simple and clear circulation for patients, their families, and medical staff.

All medical buildings are subject to rapid changes in medical processes and equipment.

The layout of the medical functions in this project is modular and can grow outward.

If necessary, new “plug-in” modular medical units can be built independently and connected to the main building in the future.

The building located at the southeast corner is a membership-based medical center that provides users with whole life-cycle health management, and it is also equipped with outpatient areas and patient rooms.

In contrast to the conventional hospitals that are “treatment-centered,” Heyou International Hospital will be one of the first hospitals in China to create a “health-centered” hospital that provides whole life-cycle health management from birth through an advanced artificial collection and process of community “mass data.”

The architectural team believes that a good hospital should reflect “doctor-patient synergy” and build a trusting relationship between both.

They wanted the hospital to be a community center where health is the common goal.

Project: Midea Heyou International Hospital
Architects: BAI Design International Limited
General Contractor: Midea Real Estate Group Co.
Client: Heyou International Hospital