University Hospital of Amiens

Healing Space Through Design

Located at city's entrance, the University Hospital and Campus of Amiens is a landmark complex that a brings a sensitive urban response to the development of an ambitious hospital and campus development. Designed by architecture office AART Farah, the complex accommodates 180,000 square meters of hospital programme, while integrating medical facilities with human scaled design in a precedent setting way.

Valued at over 248 million euros, this landmark healthcare facility comprises 1600 beds along with heavy medical and technical facilities that include MCO (medicine, surgery and obstetrics), as well as psychiatric department, biology centre, ambulatory, emergency, logistics and teaching facilities.

Philippe Domy, Director of the hospital, retained the expertise of AART Farah, who have over 25 years experience in healthcare and hospital design. For the architect, Samir Farah, it was an essential design goal to create the feeling of a human sized hospital that makes a break from the past and its legacy of large scale, institutional concepts of hospital design. Sensitivity to site was a key aspect to achieving AART Farah's context and user sensitive design goals. The hospital and campus cling to the site's relief, married with the landscape's sloping terrain, while integrating new and existing buildings together as part of a united site design.

Spatial organization was also key to achieving the architect's design goals and objects. The clustering of different functions together provides numerous benefits, including shorter trips for staff and increased spatial efficiency. Meanwhile, the scalability of indoor and outdoor spaces together with the provision of daylight to all usable spaces allows for flexibility and adaptability.

But perhaps most importantly from the user's perspective, the hospital rooms take into account demanding standards of comfort. The majority of rooms provide panoramic views over the rolling terrain of the surrounding Selle Valley, while the rooms themselves provide the most modern fittings and conveniences, including fixtures from Villeroy & Boch, along with wifi internet via mobile devices and free TV channels, including those dedicated to information about public health.

In summary, this project promotes the notion of human scaled design, while offering innovative medical and functional responses to today's most challenging issues in providing quality healthcare design and facilities.