Final drafts for the joint OMA and Buro Happold-designed Al Daayan Health District are now available, showcasing a localized model of healthcare infrastructure that OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf hopes will be transplanted from Doha, Qatar to the rest of the world. 

The 1.3-million-square-meter (14-million-square-foot) facility will be completely self-sustaining thanks to onsite prefabrication, 3D printing, an agricultural element, and built-in solar farm.

“Architects have long aimed to provide the hospital with a final solution. This proposal starts from the opposite end: viewing the hospital as the type of building that is forever under construction, as an organism for which space and time must be considered equally,” de Graaf said in a statement.

The development is anchored by a two-story building that houses a teaching hospital, women’s and children’s hospitals, ambulatory care, and clinical facilities. The new hospital will have capacity for 1,400 beds, which are deliberately placed at ground level to reduce elevator needs and so that patients can access a special hospital garden, a feature typical in Islamic medical architecture.

A logistics center and other support facilities will be connected to the hospital through underground circuitry. Al Dayaan’s construction comes at an opportune time for developers Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), who feel the project offers some unique lessons for building in the typology for years to come.

“Medical innovation is advancing exponentially; meanwhile the time to realize a hospital has hardly changed since the 1950s,” HMC’s Sean Madden said. “This project hopes to offer a way out of that situation, defining the hospital of the future by embracing the unknown future of the hospital itself.”