Another landmark hospital in northern Italy: Brescia’s new medical campus is designed by Park and Carlo Ratti

The new hospital at Malpensa by Zaha Hadid Architects, discussed with Domus by director Paolo Zilli; the surgical hub of Milan’s San Raffaele Hospital, designed by Mario Cucinella Architects as an “iceberg”; and the “holistic” hospital in Cremona, also designed by Cucinella. In recent years, Northern Italy – and Lombardy in particular – has been populated by a new generation of architect-designed hospitals: healthcare infrastructures that aspire to be something more than mere medical facilities.

Like airports, railway stations and museums, hospitals are increasingly becoming places where cities invest not only in services but also in public image, spatial quality and new forms of collective experience. Technical buildings by definition, they are now often entrusted to major international firms, tasked with turning healthcare into an architectural, urban and landscape issue.

Attilio Fontana, President of the Lombardy Region

The latest addition to this list is the Main and Children’s Hospital in Brescia, a new medical campus designed by a team led by Park Associati and Carlo Ratti Associati, winners of the international competition promoted by the Lombardy Region and the Brescia Civil Hospitals Authority. Unveiled through the studios’ official channels, the project imagines the hospital as an open civic infrastructure where care, research, landscape and public space become part of a single ecosystem. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2028, with an initial investment of 274 million euros and additional funding expected from the Lombardy regional government.

Around the two lead practices, a multidisciplinary team has been assembled that includes some of Italy’s most interesting design firms: Politecnica Building for Humans, Openfabric for landscape design, Dotdotdot for digital experience and wayfinding, Studio Mattioli for geological and environmental consultancy, and Eckersley O’Callaghan for façade engineering. The entire intervention is guided by the principle of One Health, an approach that considers human health, environmental health and community well-being as deeply interconnected dimensions.

As in the recently unveiled masterplan for the redevelopment of Milan Central Station by Park, the new layout for the Brescia campus seeks to build upon the legacy of the historic Civil Hospitals complex, reinterpreting the scheme designed by engineer Angelo Bordoni at the beginning of the twentieth century. The original hexagonal core and radial geometry are reused as the organising framework for the new intervention.

The historic pavilions will be preserved and repurposed to accommodate university and research activities, strengthening ties with the Faculty of Medicine and reinforcing the campus’s academic identity. The new clinical functions, meanwhile, will be concentrated in a system of contemporary buildings within the campus, providing more than 745 beds across approximately 60,500 square metres.

At the heart of the project is the new Main Hospital, a building composed of three interconnected wings that reinterpret the historic radial geometry of the Civil Hospitals while opening towards the city. The three arms converge in a large glazed lobby that cuts across the ground floor and overlooks a new public square conceived not only as an entrance space but also as a place of encounter and orientation for patients, visitors and residents. At the ends of the three wings are large greenhouses and shared spaces open to natural light and the surrounding landscape, while the entire complex is designed to maintain a constant relationship with greenery and the profile of the Brescian Prealps. Here, the principles of healing architecture are translated into patient rooms conceived as spaces of decompression, where outward views become an integral part of the care experience, and into naturally lit environments and circulation paths designed to reduce stress and improve the well-being of both patients and healthcare workers.

Alongside the Main Hospital will stand the Children’s Hospital, conceived as an independent building composed of three overlapping cylindrical volumes of varying heights. Their arrangement generates a sequence of terraces, courtyards and therapeutic gardens that bring nature directly into contact with the paediatric wards, while a large full-height central atrium will host play areas, meeting spaces and services for families.

Holding the entire intervention together is the CareRing, a loop extending for more than one kilometre that connects buildings, landscapes and infrastructure. Underground, it accommodates the complex’s logistical and technical flows; above ground, it becomes a continuous system of squares, pathways and gardens that reconnects the hospital campus with the city of Brescia.

“We are not simply building new facilities; we are investing in a model of care capable of integrating healthcare, research, university education and technological innovation, placing people and the overall well-being of the community at its centre,” said Attilio Fontana while presenting the new hospital at the Teatro Grande. It is a statement that could apply equally to the other major healthcare projects currently taking shape across Lombardy.

From the new hospital at Malpensa designed by ZHA to the healthcare campus in Cremona, the region appears to be turning into a laboratory for a new generation of healthcare architecture: hospitals that are more permeable, greener and more flexible, conceived as integral parts of the urban fabric and of the well-being of the communities they serve.