General Hospital, Valence

With over 800 beds and places, the CHV is a major facility serving the needs of the Drôme and part of the Ardèche. It comprises a series of buildings constructed over time since the 1970s. The aim of the project is to provide the hospital with a modern technical platform, perfectly suited to current needs and to the growing activity in surgery, endoscopy, critical care and obstetrics. The extension will house the intensive care unit, operating theatre and sterilisation departments in a new building, as well as a full floor of technical rooms and, on the roof at the top, a double helipad.

The refurbishment of a group of related buildings will enable the extension of the mother and child unit (accommodation for pathological pregnancies, obstetric unit, ante-natal diagnosis, doctors’ offices) and the repatriation of the gastroenterology consultations and technical platform.
The challenge is to respond to major site constraints, but also to a complex functional and technical phasing due to the need to keep the site in operation.

The new building is an extension of this heterogeneous complex, with no entrance or remarkable entity, and features a unitary architecture encompassing part of the existing building. The volume is simple, perfectly integrating the helipad but also taking on the recesses or aediculae forming terraces and playing with the masses. The façade is made up of solid or micro-perforated metal spines that alternate according to the functions and needs of the premises, to create privacy, limit solar gain, frame views over the landscape or integrate technical elements. Large windows break up the homogeneity of the volume to highlight certain singular spaces.

Team

Directors

Nicolas Félix-Faure, Geneviève Carini

Project leader

Géraldine Eynard,Lylian Garnier

Team

Pierre Bouchon-Cesaro, Olivia Carneiro, Gianni La Cognata, Aude Rabier

Quantity surveying

Mathias Bacconier

Site supervision

Julien Richard