« L’hôpital-paquebot » d’Henry Bernard

Abstract

In 1958, Robert Debré reformed the French public hospital service by creating the centres hospitaliers et universitaires-CHU (university hospital centres). Henry Bernard (1912-1994), who was an important figure in the French architectural scene of the postwar years of prosperity, proposed an architectural design type for a university hospital centre, in order to give architectural form to Debré’s reform. He put forward a hôpital-paquebot (literally ‘hospital-liner’), an architectural concept which housed the CHU’s four functions (diagnosis, caring, teaching and research) in a ‘coherent and focused whole’. Rejecting the dispersion of the architectural typology of a hospital scattered through several buildings, he designed a vertical and thick monoblock volume standing on a base. The Henry Bernard’s hôpital-paquebot joined the typology of hospitals called socle-tour (base-tower) and it may be described a ‘healing factory’, characteristic of French architecture of the 1960s. Even though he built six hospitals during his career, Henry Bernard was only able to adapt his concept of hôpital-paquebot in one construction, the CHU at Caen. This hospital allowed the architect to design a complete and unitary university hospital centre. It stands as an important testimony to French hospital architecture during the second half of the twentieth century, but is now a heritage threatened with destruction.

Keywords

• hospital architecture
• university hospital centre (CHU)
• public hospital
• Debré reform
• block hospital
• base-tower hospital