LEO A DALY Designs Zayed Military Hospital for UAE

OMAHA, Neb. — The Abu Dhabi Command of Military Works selected LEO A DALY to design its new 300-bed, 1.25-million-square-feet Zayed Military Hospital campus that will serve all branches of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. The design includes a 260-bed medical/surgical hospital, a 40-bed psychiatric hospital, a women’s services building, security facilities, a mosque and a utility plant.

LEO A DALY, design architect and engineer, and its local partner, AE7, architect and engineer of record, collaborated to create the concept design for the new hospital, which replaces a 45-year old military hospital located in downtown Abu Dhabi.

“It is a privilege and honor to work with the Abu Dhabi Command of Military Works to design the flagship military healthcare facility for the United Arab Emirates,” said Leo A. Daly III, FAIA, RIBA, FRAIA, Chairman and CEO of LEO A DALY. “As we endeavor to complete LEO A DALY’s largest ever international healthcare project, we are looking forward to bringing the latest in patient and staff-centered design to the Middle East.”

With final completion anticipated in 2016, Zayed Military Hospital will serve as a teaching hospital with a focus on specialties including cardiology, orthopedics, pediatrics and burn care. It will support and share services with the future Maliha Military Hospital, located to the north in Sharjah, U.A.E., which is currently under construction and expected to open in 2014.

The picturesque design is inspired by the canyons — “wadis” in Arabic — that meander informally through the lowlands of the regional landscape. The dry wadis’ dramatic rock formations, which are transformed and eroded over time by mountain floods, display the effects of one of nature’s most powerful and life-giving forces — water.

The hospital building is positioned on the high point of the site, which in many cultures is symbolic as a destination for nurturing and healing. Each building’s design replicates the curvature of canyon walls, while roadways and paths wind and converge like water would during rainstorms.

Future expansions to the medical campus will include additional residential accommodations, parking structures, a separate utility plant, a hotel for visiting families, rehabilitation and long-term care facilities and onsite recreational facilities.

The LEO A DALY design team is employing advanced building information modeling techniques to coordinate team tasks, visually represent data, program the geometry of the buildings, perform daylighting analysis, create models of the building materials and select locations for mechanical and electrical systems throughout the facility design.