Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montréal

Occupying two full city blocks in the heart of downtown Montreal, the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal (CHUM) is the largest healthcare construction project in North America and one of the largest current healthcare projects in the world. The 3,500,000 sf, 20-story research hospital will serve 345,000 ambulatory patients, 22,000 inpatients, and 65,000 emergency patients per year, encompass 35 medical disciplines, and provide 772 single-patient rooms, ambulatory and diagnostic centres, 39 operating theatres, intensive care, clinical laboratories and a research centre. The very dense medical campus was envisioned as permeable complex where the users, visitors, employees, students and the community could wander throughout the public spaces. This sensitive insertion into the urban context allows the CHUM to reconnect elements of the urban fabric that had been ruptured by the Ville-Marie Expressway 50 years ago, and to transform this nearly abandoned neighborhood into Montreal’s new Health District. Furthering the CHUM’s connection to the public is an ambitious art program totalling more than $2 million USD. In total, CHUM will have 13 large-scale works incorporated into the design—the largest in the public program’s history and the largest concentration of public art since Montreal’s Expo 1967.