The new University Children’s Hospital in Zürich-Lengg, Switzerland’s largest medical center for children and adolescents, comprises two buildings: a low-rise acute-care facility on the south plot, and a cylindrical construction for research and teaching on the north plot.

Clad in wood, the new horizontal construction engages in dialogue with the historical Burghölzli Psychiatric Hospital in front, designed by Johann Caspar Wolff in 1869. Its longitudinal facades are curved, forming a concave geometry. The interior, organized around circular and rectangular courtyards, functions like a city. Each of the three levels has a main avenue and secondary streets, alleys, and squares. The more peaceful top floor is reserved for confined patients. A series of wooden huts contains 114 rooms.

Embedded into the slope of the ground, the white cylinder has a central atrium rising five floors, fostering exchange and collaboration among students and researchers. The elements of the program are stacked inside: auditorium, seminar rooms, study center, and diagnostic laboratories. Both its cylindrical geometry and its position on the premises were thought out with the intention of providing views of the landscape.