New Main and Children’s Hospital of Brescia
Reimagining healthcare as an open civic infrastructure where care, research and public life shape the city
The project for the new Main and Children’s Hospital in Brescia reimagines one of Italy’s leading healthcare campuses as an opportunity to redefine the role of the contemporary hospital. More than a highly efficient medical facility, it is conceived as an open civic infrastructure where care, research, education and public life come together within a single, evolving organism. Developed by Park Associati, CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Politecnica Building for Humans, with Openfabric, Dotdotdot, Eckersley O’Callaghan and Studio Mattioli, the project is grounded in the principles of One Health, recognising human health, the environment and social systems as deeply interconnected. This vision is translated into an architecture that seamlessly integrates landscape, technology and spatial quality into a resilient framework designed to evolve over time. The original masterplan designed by engineer Angelo Bordoni in the early twentieth century provides the project's generative matrix. Its hexagonal core and radial geometry are not preserved as a formal relic, but reinterpreted as the ordering structure for a renewed healthcare campus that establishes continuity with the site's historical identity while looking towards the future. New clinical functions are concentrated within contemporary buildings accommodating more than 745 beds across approximately 60,500 square metres, while the historic pavilions are progressively repurposed for academic and research activities. This strategy strengthens the relationship with the Faculty of Medicine, reinforcing the campus as an integrated environment where healthcare, education and scientific research coexist. Nature extends across the entire campus, becoming an essential component of everyday life. Patients, healthcare professionals and visitors move through a continuous landscape that supports orientation, encourages movement and contributes to physical and psychological wellbeing. The new buildings open towards daylight, fresh air and the surrounding landscape of the Brescia Prealps, making the natural environment an integral part of the healing experience.
The Main Hospital is organised into three interconnected wings that reinterpret the radial structure of the existing hospital while opening the campus towards the city. At ground level, a fully glazed lobby creates a transparent urban threshold overlooking a new public square, establishing a direct relationship between the hospital and its surroundings. The internal layout prioritises intuitive circulation, clarity of movement and environmental quality. The principles of Healing Architecture are embedded through measurable design strategies including access to natural daylight, acoustic comfort, carefully proportioned spaces and continuous visual connections with the surrounding landscape. Every patient room is conceived as a place of restoration, where views towards the Brescia Prealps become part of the healing process. At the ends of each wing, large glazed winter gardens accommodate semi public spaces that extend the life of the hospital towards the landscape, transforming waiting areas into light filled environments connected to nature. The organisation of the clinical programme enhances relationships between diagnostic, treatment, intensive care, logistical and support functions. Functional proximity, efficient circulation and reduced travel distances improve operational performance while enhancing the experience of patients and healthcare professionals alike. Developed in collaboration with Eckersley O'Callaghan, the building envelope plays an active role in the environmental performance of the hospital. Advanced façade technologies integrate solar control and energy optimisation systems, balancing transparency, thermal comfort and visual continuity while transforming the façade into both a climatic device and an architectural expression.
The Children's Hospital is conceived as an autonomous building composed of three cylindrical volumes of varying heights. Its geometry creates terraces, courtyards and healing gardens that bring nature into direct contact with every department, making the landscape an active component of the therapeutic environment rather than a decorative element. At its centre, a full height atrium becomes the social heart of the building, accommodating play areas, meeting spaces and family facilities within a bright and protected environment designed to reduce stress and support the wellbeing of young patients and their families.
The CareRing is the project's defining spatial principle: a continuous loop extending over one kilometre that brings together landscape, mobility and hospital infrastructure. Below ground, it concentrates technical and logistical flows, separating them from clinical circulation to maximise efficiency and safety. Above ground, it unfolds as a continuous system of public spaces, therapeutic gardens and tree lined squares that reconnect the campus with the city. Designed by Openfabric, the landscape is conceived not as an addition to the architecture but as an ecological and social infrastructure that organises movement, improves the microclimate, enhances biodiversity and gives physical form to the principles of One Health, recognising that human wellbeing is inseparable from environmental health.
The project adopts a hybrid prefabricated timber and steel structural system assembled using dry construction methods. This approach reduces embodied carbon and construction time while introducing a high degree of flexibility, allowing the hospital to adapt to future developments in healthcare and medical technology. Digital infrastructure is seamlessly embedded throughout the project. Intelligent wayfinding, flow management and environmental monitoring systems improve efficiency, safety and user experience without becoming visually intrusive. Developed by Dotdotdot, the project's experiential layer combines physical devices with digital platforms to create a more intuitive and inclusive environment while supporting Lean principles that streamline hospital operations and optimise daily activities. The new Main and Children's Hospital for Brescia proposes a new vision for healthcare architecture: a public infrastructure where architecture, landscape, technology and research converge within an adaptable ecosystem designed to strengthen the relationship between the hospital and the city, while responding to the evolving challenges of future care.
- LocationParis
- ClientASST Spedali Civili di Brescia, ARIA Azienda Regionale per l’Innovazione e gli Acquisti
- StatusIn Progress
- Area60000 m²
- Design team
Founding Partners: Filippo Pagliani, Michele Rossi Project Director: Davide Viganò Project Leader: Elisa Borghi Architects: Lidia Marchianò, Gessica Zhang, Davide Perin, Diego Fiori, Greta Piazza, Michela Pecoraro Material Specialist: Federico Bruno FF&e: Alice Cuteri Visualizations: Antonio Cavallo, Stefano Venegoni Giulia Bartoli
- CreditsViz by Park Associati and CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati, Video by Emme Works
Project developed by Park Associati, CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and Politecnica Building for Humans, with Openfabric, Dotdotdot, Eckersley O’Callaghan and Studio Mattioli
