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Towards the new century of health care development, hospital infrastructure becomes one of the most critical and challenging development in our society. After the destructions caused by “Katrina”, people demands for new improvements from the existing health care system in New Orleans and the city’s aging hospitals. When a disaster occurs in a city, the hospital facilities become the most important building structures that not only act as the shelters and protection for people, but also the upfront defense mechanisms toward the disastrous situation. Its urban setting and structural design must have the ability to withstand any impact caused by a natural or artificial disaster.
The proposed Mega Medical City [MMC] aims to merge, combine and mix the current hospital facilities within the New Orleans city into one primary medical hub. This design includes both the Tulane University hospital as well as the Charity Hospital. The elevated [above flood plane] mega structure will be built across highway 10 and it will be expanded across 5 city blocks in order to accommodate the high volume of medical needs. The MMC is intended to become the shopping mall for medical needs in the city. Hospitals will no longer be widely dispersed but will be concentrated in one central area to provide all the healthcare services to people. The structure consists of 4 essential elements 1] Elevated Urban Plate, 2] Urban Forest, 3] Transportation connecting hub [Horizontal / Vertical] and 4] Programmable medical building block. These 4 elements will compress together to generate a multi level medical building matrix which will be inter-connected with each other across the urban block. There will be no separation between different hospitals, but a united medical center that is dedicated to the people of New Orleans.