A resilient landscape as a backdrop for Renzo Piano's building 

Right from the very start, architect Renzo Piano underscored the importance of abundant, vibrant greenery in this compact university hospital campus. The load-bearing structures necessary for the suspended gardens in the patio and rooftop spaces were incorporated into the architectural design at the outset of the project. Each hospital room looks out onto one of the campus’s eleven densely planted patios, their planting composition forming a continuation of the miniature forest that surrounds the hospital. A large, 1-hectare suspended garden inhabits the rooftop, which receives abundant direct sunlight. Equal in surface area to the Place des Vosges square, this immersive rooftop space provides a “healing landscape” for patients and healthcare professionals alike. Linden trees line the rooftop edges, enriched with small fruit trees and medicinal plants and herbs. The ordered layout of the suspended garden echoes the building architecture, while amplifying the half-hectare, ground level urban forest from which the hospital emerges.