On the edge of Marne-la-Vallée, the new town to the east of Paris, on a large, perfectly flat, 12 hectare site, this project is the most perfect realisation of the “monospace” hospital concept designed by the practice. A strict grid dictates both the arrangement of the different buildings on the site (medical department, logistics, car parks, possible future extensions) and the internal organisation of the hospital. This forms a sort of checkerboard of perfectly balanced solids and voids, which lends itself perfectly to the Magic Square puzzle of putting together a hospital.

Despite its size, the hospital complex succeeds in blending into its site discreetly, its white facades almost diaphanous. “Anonymous” facades that efface the repetition of the windows, along with any technical elements. Facades that set out, were conceived and designed to express that nothing here is fixed definitively. The built form has fully integrated the possibility for future change.

Therefore, while six horizontal strata (corresponding to three levels) can be made out in the facades, it is primarily vertical lines, continuous, that are seen. White, screen-printed lines, whose frequency produces a subtle effect of resonance.