Project Overview
This project redefines the typology of a specialist dental hospital by positioning itself as a strategic node in a broader vision: a multidisciplinary hub for oral health innovation. Anchored in Chengdu and oriented towards both the western regions of China and international collaboration, the scheme integrates clinical care, research and development, education, translational application, and industrial incubation into a coherent architectural response.
Set within Tianfu New Area—a rapidly emerging zone for knowledge and technology-based industries—the site enjoys a rich ecological setting, bounded by the Luxi River to the east and a municipal wetland park to the west. Crucially, it occupies a protected urban view corridor where sightlines extend from the cityscape to the Longquan Mountains in the east and the snow-capped Xiling Mountains in the west. This sensitive context has led to strict height and massing constraints, which have shaped the design from the outset.
The architectural strategy responds with a low-rise, horizontally articulated composition that dissolves boundaries between city and campus. A series of interlinked volumes and landscaped courtyards form a porous, multidimensional cluster, allowing the complex programme to unfold with clarity and flexibility. The result is not a monolithic institution, but an open, adaptive framework—both a civic landmark and a catalyst for future-oriented medical development.
Project Commissioner
Chengdu Tiantou Health Industry Investment Co., Ltd.
Project Creator
CSWADI-China Southwest Architectural Design and Research Institute Corp. LTD
Team
MAC (Medical & Healthcare Architecture Design & Research Center): Zhang Yuanping, Cai Linling, Wang Jiabiao, Huang Yifu, Guan Jianan, Gao Hui, Hu Peisheng, Su Yuhan, Wu Fan
Architecture: Zheng Xin, Song Zhuoer, Han Yiwen, Fang Junjie, Xu Bo, Lu Yixiu, Zeng Zhijing, Lei Qiaoyu, Liang Siqi, Tan Yanjie, Li Zhongquan, Zhang Yitao, Xiao Xu, Huang Xuan, Xie Jiaju, Peng Yuxuan
Structure: Zhou Jinwei, Zhao Jie
HVAC: Pang Hao
Water Supply and Drainage: Wang Chunxian
Electrical: Zheng Jun
Project Brief
The project is programmed to accommodate a major clinical capacity of 200 dental chairs and 100 inpatient beds, alongside facilities for advanced oral medicine research, education, and industry collaboration. The 144-mu site (approx. 9.6 hectares) is fragmented into four separate plots, with the largest—74 mu—located in the southern portion. The remaining plots range from 11 to 31 mu, presenting a complex spatial and organisational challenge.
In response, the master plan adopts a clear functional zoning strategy. The southern plot serves as the core zone, integrating clinical, teaching, and research functions. It houses a flagship Smart Dental Diagnosis and Research Centre, forming the heart of medical and academic activity. The northern plots are designated for research and industry extension, anchored by three key platforms: the Centre for Dental Innovation, the R&D Translation Hub, and the Industry Incubation Cluster. This spatial configuration ensures efficient land use while aligning with the stringent building height restrictions required to preserve key urban view corridors.
Architecturally, the core zone is shaped into a compact, efficient, and highly recognisable volume. In contrast, the R&D zone adopts a modular, low-rise layout that adapts to both topography and diverse industrial functions.
The design further integrates high-standard clinical workflows, intuitive circulation, and ecological sensitivity. By unifying urban and campus mobility and embedding nature into the healing environment, the project offers patients and professionals an intelligent, artfully crafted space for care and discovery, and researchers a green, adaptive setting for translational innovation.
Project Innovation/Need
With a growing proportion of oral healthcare users seeking preventive, aesthetic, and restorative treatments, the target population for dental services is increasingly characterised by non-patient attributes. In China, this trend is accompanied by a marked shift towards younger, even adolescent demographics. As a result, the design departs from conventional institutional typologies, reimagining the dental hospital as an inviting and human-centred environment.
The architectural and spatial language deliberately resists the formal cues of traditional medical buildings. Instead, the project explores a “de-hospitalised” approach—employing fluid geometries, soft transitions, and immersive experiences that blend art and oral medicine. This design philosophy enhances comfort and perceived quality throughout the patient journey, offering a multi-sensory, emotionally attuned healing environment that redefines expectations of clinical space.
In response to the increasing specialisation and refinement of oral medicine, the spatial system is structured around a modular diagnostic and treatment unit. Each unit is based on a standardised clinical module, which can be flexibly adapted and scaled according to the specific requirements of sub-disciplines. Through parametric adjustment of unit size, layout, and aggregation, the design allows for tailored configurations that accommodate a range of treatment modes, enabling operational flexibility without sacrificing clarity or cohesion.
Altogether, the project establishes a forward-looking typology for dental care: both precise in function and generous in atmosphere, capable of addressing the technical demands of modern dentistry while elevating the user experience through thoughtful, responsive design.
Design Challenge
One of the project’s greatest design challenges lies in negotiating the complex relationship between a large-scale medical facility and its surrounding urban and ecological context. In particular, the site lies within a designated city-to-mountain view corridor—an axis that visually connects Chengdu’s urban fabric with the Longquan and Xiling mountain ranges. Responding sensitively to this visual mandate became a central generator of the architectural strategy.
Rather than resisting the height constraints imposed by the view corridor, the design embraces them as opportunities. The building massing subtly recedes along key sightlines, transforming functional setbacks into layered terraces that invite nature into the architectural composition. These stepped forms give rise to a multi-tiered landscape of outdoor platforms, gardens, and communal spaces, together forming what has become known as the “West China Oral Innovation Valley.”
This spatial interplay fosters a reciprocal relationship between city and site—an architecture that yields to the city’s gaze, while offering its own green vistas in return. Courtyards, open corridors, and voids are carefully embedded throughout the complex, allowing sunlight, air, and greenery to permeate deep into the interior environment.
The result is an ecological, human-centred healthcare campus that integrates seamlessly with its topography and surrounding cityscape—neither dominating nor retreating, but coexisting. It is an architecture of mutual regard: one that shares, shelters, and speaks to both nature and the city in equal measure.
Sustainability
This project integrates green building principles and dual-carbon design strategies to realise a human-centred, ecological, and multifunctional healthcare environment. The design focuses primarily on addressing site-specific and climatic challenges through two key approaches:
Earthwork Balance and Site-Adaptive Land Use Strategy
Due to significant elevation differences across the site, the design adheres to the principles of earthwork balance and contextual adaptation. In the northern zone, portions of the original mountainous landscape are preserved, with modular R&D facilities thoughtfully and naturally embedded into the terrain. In the southern zone, aside from the medical entrance plaza, most of the original site topography is retained. The combination of partially earth-covered buildings and varied architectural forms minimises excavation volumes, striving to achieve near-complete earthwork balance within the site boundaries.
Wind Guidance and Ventilation-Optimised Architectural Form and Spatial Strategy
Chengdu’s climate is characterised by high humidity, with summers feeling hot and stifling and winters damp and cold. Externally, the main medical buildings feature linear forms with softened rounded corners, promoting pleasant microclimatic wind flows. Internally, the design reinterprets the traditional Sichuan courtyard—‘jingyuan’—through contemporary technology. This courtyard concept is employed in the core public atrium spaces, where computational simulations informed the optimal spatial forms and dimensions. This approach ensures abundant natural daylight while simultaneously maximising natural ventilation for enhanced indoor comfort.
Architecture - Public and Institutional - International
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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