Hospital of the Future. OMA and Buro Happold design the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

OMA / Reinier de Graaf, together with Buro Happold, has finalized the design for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha, (the capital and most populous city of Qatar, on the coast of the Persian gulf) commissioned by Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC).

Located on a 1.3 million-sqm plot of virgin land, the project explores the potential of modularity, prefabrication, and automation in relation to the rapid changes in medical science.

“Architects have long aimed to provide the hospital with a final solution. This proposal starts from the opposite end: viewing the hospital as the type of building that is forever under construction, as an organism for which space and time must be considered equally.”

Reinier de Graaf, OMA.

Al Daayan Health District by OMA and Buro Happold. Image courtesy of HMC.

“Medical innovation is advancing exponentially; meanwhile the time to realize a hospital has hardly changed since the 1950s. This project hopes to offer a way out of that situation, defining the hospital of the future by embracing the unknown future of the hospital itself.”

Sean Madden, HMC.

OMA and Buro Happold designed the centerpiece of the district with a two-story structure that brings together a tertiary teaching hospital, a women’s and children’s hospital, and an ambulatory diagnostics center, with a total capacity of 1,400 beds. Clinical facilities occupy the first floor; bed wards are located on the ground floor, reducing the dependency on elevators and allowing patients to enjoy the complex’s generous gardens – healing spaces with a long history in Islamic medical architecture.

“The complex functional requirements of a large hospital and the lessons we have learned from the recent crisis have created a unique opportunity to reinvent the way architects and engineers collaborate.”

Gavin Thompson, Buro Happold.

Cross-shaped modular units, prefabricated on-site, can be reconfigured and expanded with minimal disruption to ongoing processes, significantly lowering the cost of future adaptations.

3D printing allows for endless variations in the design of the facades, reintroducing ornament in an architectural typology usually characterized by austerity. A high-tech farm supplies food and medical plants for the local production of medicine. All supporting facilities are connected to the hospitals by an automated underground circulation system. A dedicated logistics center and solar farm enable the district to function autonomously.

Buildable at low cost, with minimum reliance on global supply chains, the Al Daayan Health District aims to establish itself as a prototype that can be adopted globally – an alternative to prevailing hospital models developed in the West.

Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) is the main provider of secondary and tertiary healthcare in Qatar, and one of the leading hospital providers in the Middle East.

Al Daayan Health District by OMA and Buro Happold. Image courtesy of HMC

Al Daayan Health District by OMA and Buro Happold. Rendering by Tegmark, courtesy of OMA.

Project description by OMA

In the context of rapidly advancing medical innovation, a rethink of the hospital becomes an urgent priority. The Al Daayan Health District presents the perfect opportunity. Located on a 1.3-million-sqm virgin site between Qatar University and the new Lusail City, it offers the possibility for a new symbiosis between architecture and medical science.

A tertiary teaching hospital, a women’s and children’s hospital, and an ambulatory diagnostics center, with a total capacity of 1,400 beds are joined into a single structure. Clinical facilities occupy the first floor; bed wards are located on the ground floor, reducing the dependency on elevators and allowing patients to enjoy the complex’s generous gardens – healing spaces with a long history in Islamic medical architecture.

Cross-shaped modular units, prefabricated on-site, can be reconfigured and expanded with minimal disruption to ongoing processes, significantly lowering the cost of future adaptations. 3D printing allows for endless variations in the design of the facades, reintroducing ornament in an architectural typology usually characterized by austerity. A high-tech farm supplies food and medical plants for the local production of medicine. All supporting facilities are connected to the hospitals by an automated underground circulation system. A dedicated logistics center and solar farm enable the district to function autonomously.

The Al Daayan Health District was commissioned by Hamad Medical Corporation, Qatar’s premier not-for-profit healthcare provider. Buildable at low cost, with minimum reliance on global supply chains, it aims to establish itself as a prototype that can be adopted globally – an alternative to prevailing hospital models developed in the West.

Al Daayan Health District by OMA and Buro Happold. Rendering by Tegmark, courtesy of HMC.

View more images

Metalocus recommends

Gago Green House by Bruno Dias Arquitectura. Photograph by Hugo Santos Silva

Dialogue between past and present. Gago Green House by Bruno Dias Arquitectura

House E1 by Jerez Arquitectos. Photograph by Iñaki Bergera

Modulated gaps. House E1 by Jerez Arquitectos

The Danish Pavilion as a Construction Site by Søren Pihlmann. Photograph by Hampus Berndtson

Building Upon the World Without Building Anew. The Danish Pavilion as a Construction Site by Søren Pihlmann

More information

Label

Architects

Text

The project for the Al Daayan Health District is led by OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf, Project Manager Alex de Jong and Project Architect Kaveh Dabiri.

Label

Project team

Text

Pablo Antuna Molina, Claudio Araya, Bozar Ben-Zeev, Joana Cidade, Benedetta Gatti, Eve Hocheng, Sofia Hosszufalussy, Hanna Jankowska, Tijmen Klone, Marina Kounavi, Hans Larsson, Roza Matveeva, Geert Reitsma, Alex Retegan, Silvia Sandor, Elisa Versari, Arthur Wong.

Label

Collaborators

Text

Masterplan Engineering.- Buro Happold.
Clinical Architect.- Henning Larsen Architects, Dutch Healthcare Architects.
Stakeholder Management.- Engineering Consultants Group.
Landscape Architect.- Michel Desvigne Paysagiste.
Cost Adviser.- De Leeuw Group.
Wayfinding.- Spaceagency.

Reinier de Graaf

Reinier de Graaf (1964, Schiedam) is a Dutch architect and writer. Reinier de Graaf joined OMA in 1996. He is responsible for building and masterplanning projects in Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, including Holland Green in London (completed 2016), the new Timmerhuis in Rotterdam (completed 2015), G-Star Headquarters in Amsterdam (completed 2014), De Rotterdam (completed 2013), and the Norra Tornen residential towers in Stockholm. In 2002, he became director of AMO, the think tank of OMA, and produced The Image of Europe, an exhibition illustrating the history of the European Union.

He has overseen AMO’s increasing involvement in sustainability and energy planning, including Zeekracht: a strategic masterplan for the North Sea; the publication in 2010 of Roadmap 2050: A Practical Guide to a Prosperous, Low-Carbon Europe with the European Climate Foundation; and The Energy Report, a global plan for 100 percent renewable energy by 2050, with the WWF.

De Graaf has worked extensively in Moscow, overseeing OMA’s proposal to design the masterplan for the Skolkovo Centre for Innovation, the ‘Russian Silicon Valley,’ and leading a consortium which proposed a development concept for the Moscow Agglomeration: an urban plan for Greater Moscow. He recently curated two exhibitions, On Hold at the British School in Rome in 2011 and Public Works: Architecture by Civil Servants (Venice Biennale, 2012; Berlin, 2013). He is the author of Four Walls and a Roof, The Complex Nature of a Simple Profession.

OMA. Office for Metropolitan Architecture

Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) is an international practice operating within the traditional boundaries of architecture and urbanism. AMO, a research and design studio, applies architectural thinking to domains beyond. OMA is led by eight partners – Rem Koolhaas, Reinier de Graaf, Ellen van Loon, Shohei Shigematsu, Iyad Alsaka, Chris van Duijn, Jason Long, and Managing Partner-Architect David Gianotten – and maintains offices in Rotterdam, New York, Hong Kong, Doha, and Australia. OMA-designed buildings currently under construction are the renovation of Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, The Factory in Manchester, Hangzhou Prism, the CMG Times Center in Shenzhen and the Simone Veil Bridge in Bordeaux.

OMA’s completed projects include Taipei Performing Arts Centre (2022), Audrey Irmas Pavilion in Los Angeles (2020), Norra Tornen in Stockholm (2020), Axel Springer Campus in Berlin (2020), MEETT Toulouse Exhibition and Convention Centre (2020), Galleria in Gwanggyo (2020), WA Museum Boola Bardip (2020), nhow RAI Hotel in Amsterdam (2020), a new building for Brighton College (2020), and Potato Head Studios in Bali (2020). Earlier buildings include Fondazione Prada in Milan (2018), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow (2015), De Rotterdam (2013), CCTV Headquarters in Beijing (2012), Casa da Música in Porto (2005), and the Seattle Central Library (2004).

AMO often works in parallel with OMA's clients to fertilize architecture with intelligence from this array of disciplines. This is the case with Prada: AMO's research into identity, in-store technology, and new possibilities of content-production in fashion helped generate OMA's architectural designs for new Prada epicenter stores in New York and Los Angeles. In 2004, AMO was commissioned by the European Union to study its visual communication, and designed a colored "barcode" flag, combining the flags of all member states, which was used during the Austrian presidency of the EU. AMO has worked with Universal Studios, Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, Heineken, Ikea, Condé Nast, Harvard University and the Hermitage. It has produced Countryside: The Future, a research exhibited at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale, including Public Works (2012), Cronocaos (2010), and The Gulf (2006); and for Fondazione Prada, including When Attitudes Become Form (2012) and Serial and Portable Classics (2015). AMO, with Harvard University, was responsible for the research and curation of the 14th Venice Architecture Biennale and its publication Elements. Other notable projects are Roadmap 2050, a plan for a Europe-wide renewable energy grid; Project Japan, a 720-page book on the Metabolism architecture movement (Taschen, 2010); and the educational program of Strelka Institute in Moscow.

Published on: October 18, 2021

Cite: "Hospital of the Future. OMA and Buro Happold design the Al Daayan Health District in Doha" METALOCUS. Accessed

<http://www.metalocus.es/en/news/hospital-future-oma-and-buro-happold-design-al-daayan-health-district-doha> ISSN 1139-6415