Project Data
Bern, Switzerland
Location
Canton Bern Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings
Client
Inselspital University Hospital
User
Current floor area: 280,000m² (3,013,900 sq. ft.); growth to 600,000 m² (6,458,300 sq ft)
Campus building footprint
HENN Architects, Berlin
Urban Designer
2010 to 2060
Implementation Period
Around 44,000 inpatients per year; 6400 employees, in addition to 900 students
Users
“The masterplan is valid indefinitely, but is not finite” (Giorgio Macchi, Chief Architect of the Office for Real Estate and Public Buildings, Canton Bern, 2011)
Background
Founded in 1354, the hospital has moved several times and located in its current site in 1867. Several master plans were initiated, the latest in 1956. Then, the Accident and Emergency- and Surgical Center ‘INO’ was built and completed in 2012 to act as a new center of gravity for the Inselspital site.
At that time, new facilities were built largely without consideration of the site structure as a whole, which lead to a certain fragmentation of functions. Existing process related and organizational restrictions made adjustments to the changing functional requirements of the new buildings impossible. As a result of this geographical and functional fragmentation, organizational processes became inefficient and insufficient for the qualitative requirements of a modern university hospital in both medical and operational terms. Due to this, the national and international position of the Inselspital was threatened. Significant drivers of success, such as interdisciplinary cooperation, impromptu exchange of knowledge and a high degree of interconnection appeared impossible to realize within the existing infrastructure.
In 2010, an international urban planning competition was held to design a ‘Masterplan 2060’ of the Inselspital. HENN Architects won the competition. HENN’S masterplan created a strategic planning tool to steer development of the site. Acting as a rulebook guiding all future development activities, the masterplan enables rapid planning decisions. It allows for various forms of functional organization while additionally leaving space for flexible operational decisions. In addition, it supports sustainable values for urban planning and facilitates with high density building on the site.
Single construction projects were to be facilitated step-by-step, without impacting the ongoing hospital functions. Strengthening the local identity as a healthcare campus and its positive characteristics was required. Generally, the requirement of ecological, economic and social sustainability was set. However, the biggest challenge of the competition was the requirement to develop a planning tool that remained meaningful and usable for the next generation.
Based on all the above, the competition masterplan proposed three key ideas:
Topography:
The bulk and massing increases in density towards the center of the site and thus elevates the existing topography. As a result, the massing increases its significance in its external appearance within the urban context. Towards the site periphery, the building volumes and heights reduce to facilitate a connection to the scale of the neighboring buildings and urban fabric.
Forming Urban Quarters
The urban structure of the masterplan derives from the idea to form small urban quarters within the site. Listed buildings form the center of each quarter, each arranged on a new urban square.
Kneading Dough
The required floor area per building plot serves as the so called ‘Dough’, which can be ‘kneaded’ freely within the limits of a volumetric frame. Hence, various volumetric forms can emerge within a set three-dimensional boundary. This idea ensures the freedom to newly interpret and realize future functional, economic and architectural demands.
Masterplan
HENN was asked to continue developing the ‘Masterplan 2060’ up to a stage at which it could be transferred into a legally binding document. The three key ideas: topography, urban quarters, and kneading dough, continued to build the foundation of the ‘Masterplan 2060’.
During a time span of two generations, the masterplan not only has to fulfill social, economic and ecological requirements through urban planning, it also has to hold up to unforeseeable future requirements of a medical campus. Hence, the masterplan cannot be a rigid planning document that will lose its relevance over the course of time due to changing requirements. On the contrary, this masterplan is to be a strategic spatial planning tool: It defines a frame for structured urban development but does not prescribe function or architecture of single building projects. This way, an open-scenario structure emerges, where varying organizational and functional concepts can be realized on each plot, e.g. the arrangement of medical centers or alternatively the arrangement of functional centers.
All central plots have dimensions designed to accommodate various kinds of clinical functions. A largely orthogonal grid supports flexibility and neutrality of use. Moreover, the plots were arranged to maintain existing buildings such as the newly built INO so that they remain fully operational and functionally integrated within the masterplan until they finish their lifecycle.
The Inselspital masterplan intends for the site to form a permeable, integral part of the urban fabric and to serve as an attractive public space. Simultaneously the Inselspital has to exude the positive air of a healthcare campus, not just a place to cure sickness. This places high demands on external spaces with regards to atmospheric quality, wayfinding and spatial permeability. Nevertheless, it has to be possible to connect buildings in a way to facilitate easy transport of people and goods. Currently, the Inselspital site offers diversified spatial experiences ranging between busy hospital life at its core and nearly bucolic landscape gardens on the so called ‘Englaenderhubel’ towards the western end of the site. The masterplan therefore intends to not only strengthen these characteristics but also to create a connection between these contrasting elements.
Masterplan Objectives
The masterplan’s legal document consists of a graphic plan of the site and a written rulebook. The graphic plan defines the urban structure, i.e. future plots, listed buildings, landscaping etc. and quantifies floor area requirements and volumetric limits. Additionally, the rulebook describes in a qualitative manner the overriding objectives and key ideas including tangible rules.
The question remains: how to leave a planning document for the next generation, describing ideas in an easily retraceable way, thus eliminating the need for the author to be present for explanations? The rulebook tries to develop a framework that shows how ideas derive from objectives, and how these ideas then generate rules. This framework, establishing overarching abstract objectives which further define the finer details within the masterplan, has proved to be highly effective in the development process.
In detail, the rulebook defines five primary objectives. These objectives originated from requirements during the competition.
Identity - The Inselspital site should be strengthened in its uniqueness and identity. Preserving and integrating listed historical buildings plays a central role.
Structure - The aim is to create an urban quarter with the character of a healthcare campus. This puts a focus on the quality of external space and landscaping. Hierarchies in the new part of urban fabric should be clearly legible and thus enhance orientation and wayfinding on the site and within buildings.
Capacity - This means keeping development perspectives open on the long run. Various forms of functional organization should be possible as and when required. A further consideration is to facilitate change of use and temporary usability of buildings, which requires floor layouts to be functionally neutral to a high degree.
Economic Efficiency - A prerequisite of all planning activity is to make built space economically efficient to use. Part of this objective therefore is to extend the lifecycle of buildings in a sense of sustainability. It should also be possible to offer spaces for external businesses with medicine-related purpose, e.g. med-tech startups emerging from research departments.
Availability of Building Plots - At any time, there should be a free plot of land available for new buildings in the sense of ‘crop rotation’, in order to start new building projects easily and quickly, depending on the situation and demands at any point in time.
Key Ideas
Based on the above five objectives, seven key ideas were formulated. Subsequently, these key ideas became the basis for a set of rules. The three key ideas at the heart of the competition design were amended and extended, so that the rulebook now defines seven key ideas:
Forming Urban Quarters - Like the competition design, the Masterplan 2060 aims to create urban quarters on the site. A single or group of listed historical buildings defines the center of each new quarter. The building is located centrally on a new urban square or pocket park. This square or park is defined at its boundaries through new building fronts. Pedestrian routes and visual connections connect single quarters with each other. This supports orientation and wayfinding, but also strengthens the cultural and historical identity of the Inselspital site.
Open Space - A central axis connects the new urban squares and makes it possible to experience a series of varying ambient atmospheres from the busy Murtenstrasse high street through to the ‘Englaenderhubel’ landscape garden. This again supports and enhances the local identity of the Inselspital site. The appearance and quality of the open space significantly influences the perceived amenity of the whole site, and as such plays a leading role for the whole masterplan.
Density - The density of mass increases towards the center of the site. Along the site boundaries, the massing adjusts to match its context and to ensure a seamless connection with the overall urban fabric.
Kneading Dough - As opposed to the usual approach, the Inselspital masterplan neither defines nor locates buildings on plots. A given total floor area per plot can be freely formed within a certain volumetric limit, depending on the functional and architectural requirements of each building. This allows each building to individually adapt to future requirements determined at the time of its development and realization.
Interconnection - Neighboring plots on the site should be well connected with each other, in order to ensure maximum capacity as well as functional variability. Through linking elements or passages above and below ground, functional areas can be connected and extended horizontally between separate buildings.
Disentanglement - The aim is to separate motorized and pedestrian traffic as well as transport of patients and transport of goods across the site and within buildings. Introducing priorities and hierarchies for traffic and transport aims to improve the experience of wayfinding especially for patients, visitors and all other users.
Crop rotation - The principle of ‘Crop Rotation’ intends to offer empty plots for fast but nevertheless sustainable development, while keeping all existing hospital processes intact and operational. This requires available empty plots, so called ‘fallow land’, for the next step of development. As soon as a construction project is planned for an existing fallow plot, a new empty plot must be located. In case a plot is too large for the intended building, it can be divided into sub-plots with the prerequisite to achieve the required floor area once all sub-plots have been built.
Rules
In the third and final step, rules were derived from the defined key ideas. These can be found at a lower position in the framework, becoming rather precise urban planning requirements.
Green Spaces and Routes
As the bulk and massing of future buildings is unknown, it is essential that all greenery serves the wayfinding on the site. Therefore, all primary and secondary routes in the masterplan are lined by alley trees and linear parks. All linear greenery is interrupted where the route meets an adjacent square, in order to open up the views towards the square. This also helps to interconnect and weave routes into squares.
Building Lines
According to the masterplan, each urban quarter has a square at its center. However, only certain building proportions provide the right structure to generate the sense of an urban square. Even if form and location of new buildings on plots surrounding the square are still unknown, it has to be ensured that the volume of adjacent buildings helps to form this square. Therefore, building lines were introduced to define the requirement for closed building fronts on boundary lines surrounding each square. To avoid towering buildings which suffocate a square by their sheer vertical dimension, the requirement for a closed perimeter only applies to the plinth of each building. The building mass above should be set back from the plinth. The height of the plinth is not set in absolute terms. Instead, the height of the plinth of each building adjacent to a square is defined to range between a minimum and a maximum relative to a set level for each square. There are two variables on each building plot: 1) ground floor location relative to topography and 2) free choice of floor-to-floor dimension. Because the highest point of the site is 35m (115 ft) above the lowest point, the possible number of stories for each building plinth can vary. The objective is to achieve a consistent edge line of building plinths around each square.
Plots
By their set dimensions, plots define the space where new buildings can be constructed on the site. Buildings can be shaped according to project requirements within the extent of a volumetric spatial frame (Figure 1). In order to determine the shape and appearance of the buildings, a separate competition is to be held for each plot. The ‘Plot’ rule is amended by the ‘Building Line’ rule around squares, requirements of total floor area per plot and maximum possible height requirements.
Height Development
One of the three competition ideas, ‘Topography’, can be found here. By increasing the density and thus building height towards the center of the site, which is already located on a hill, a super-elevation of the topography is achieved. This has significant impact on the physical appearance of the site within the urban context of Bern. Today, the inpatient tower is the Inselspital’s landmark, as it can be seen from most points in the city and its surroundings. As soon as it will be replaced, new high buildings at the core of the site will take over this role.
Connection Level
Setting a fixed reference level for all plots enables the horizontal connection of new buildings at the core of the site. This rule only refers to one floor per plot, so that ceiling heights above and below the connection level remain unaffected. Therefore, functional and organizational connections across buildings become possible.
Bridge Connections
A connection between buildings or plots is possible via bridges. This adds an efficient system of internal routes to the already existing transport tunnels below ground. By this means, patients no longer need to be transferred through unwelcoming logistics tunnels but can be moved above ground. In addition, internal visitor routes can now be offered between buildings. The rulebook requires these bridges to be designed and proportioned in a way that leaves the buildings legible as autonomous architectural elements.
Access System
The main aim of the traffic and infrastructure concept is to disentangle traffic flows by prioritizing routes and developing a concept of route hierarchies. In the future, all motorized traffic, especially emergency ambulance traffic and logistics traffic, is to access the site directly from both main roads around the site and one historical main road that crosses through the campus. All further internal routes are reserved for pedestrian and bicycle traffic. A new main pedestrian ‘street’ from East to West will become an important feature of the campus.
Technical Infrastructure
The aim of this concept is to simplify the infrastructure network on the site by introducing two primary data - and infrastructure tunnels below ground. In order to guarantee maximum flexibility for the plots, all technical infrastructures including the two main tunnels are to be run parallel to plots beneath the roads.
Through all the above objectives, key ideas and rules, the rulebook tries to detail the intent of the masterplan. Qualitative descriptions have been chosen over quantitative prescriptions (exceptions being the total floor area per plot and maximum height per plot), in order to give the masterplan ‘space to breathe’ in the future.
Spatial / Organizational / Sustainable Masterplan
While HENN developed the masterplan that refers to all things urban and architectural, a team of operational specialists developed a masterplan that mainly refers to organizational functions. Both of these masterplans were then additionally amended by a third element, the Masterplan for ‘Ecology and Sustainability’. While the ‘Spatial Masterplan’ provides a stable urban planning tool to ensure structured spatial development through the next decades, the ‘Organizational Masterplan’ depicts current and acute requirements of a complex hospital organization within a highly dynamic context. The idea to build a masterplan out of three components (spatial, organizational and sustainability) emerged during the process of shaping the spatial masterplan. Both the organizational and sustainability masterplans were then mainly developed by the client (i.e. the Inselspital).
To start the Organizational Masterplan, an intense quantitative analysis of medical data had to be undertaken. The aim was to visualize patient routes in order to determine the functional dependencies and physical proximity between clinical departments.
The Inselspital’s mission statement puts the patient as the central focus. Therefore, an executive decision was made to make the patient process the key driver for future functional structures. The new core idea is interdisciplinary collaboration. This means that in the future clinical departments cannot constitute spatially independent centers for specialists. Thus, a new organizational form had to be found for the Inselspital.
In the next step of the modelling process, the existing organizational structure was dissolved and replaced by a new model of “gravitation.” The model simulated how closely different units approach each other when patient movements between them amplify the attraction. The result was a clear, but not exactly surprising picture. The A&E, radiology & diagnostics units and operating rooms are medical core functions, which are strongly connected with most other disciplines. Consequently, these core functions need to be centrally located.
In 2012 the newly opened Accident, Emergency and Surgery Center ‘INO’ with radiology and laboratory medicine houses the above core functions. There was now a new requirement recognized for three medical centers: three other medical centers, i.e. the Comprehensive Cancer, Comprehensive Neuroscience and Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center should be sited in immediate adjacency of the INO. This pragmatic proposal, which reflects the day-to-day necessities of clinical process, found fast and broad approval among the hospital management. Thus, the first steps to develop the Inselspital site were set.
The Inselspital took its first steps towards a structured development immediately after the approval of the zoning plan in March 2015.
The realization of the Inselspital Masterplan has been proceeding steadily. At this writing, at least four plots have been built or are nearing completion. Two further plots have also been subject to architectural competitions in 2020. On two core plots, the Organ - and Tumor Center as well as the Swiss Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center are being built. A new Center for Translational Research will form the face towards the city center on a plot close to the main entry route to the Inselspital site.
The zoning plan requires an architectural competition for each plot and the open space of the Inselspital site. The architectural masterplan has been complemented by an „exterior masterplan“, providing guidance on the structure of hard and soft landscaping.
Three project competitions have already taken place (as of 2021) with additional competitions planned in the near and distant future. Each of these project competitions will deal with a variety of architectural and organizational requirements for a huge, technically complex building project. Each of these competitions will see new participants and new jury members, selecting a winner based on different criteria. So not only context, also the actors will vary from project to project. Due to this variability, the question arises “How will it be possible to keep in mind the bigger picture, i.e. the qualitative aspirations of the masterplan?”
An advisory board was formed to steer the implementation of the masterplan, deciding which plot will be built next and which function/user it needs to be built for. The advisory board consists of the heads of Inselgruppe, Bern city planning authorities, City Council, Bern University etc. That is the group of persons responsible for all high-level decisions regarding the Inselspital area. Even contrasting interests have to be brought to the table and discussed until they are resolved, which is a great democratic tool. Gunter Henn is part of the board in a consulting function.
As before in the Inselspital’s long history, the site will continue to evolve and develop. Part of this process is to continue “curating” the masterplan in the long term.
NOTE: At the time of writing (March 2023), the Inselspital is in the final stage of completing the new main building (BB12), with the official opening in August 2023.
