Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

Despite all the fascination for this building task - there is still a difference between visiting a building as an architect and as a patient who cannot choose a hospital from the points of view that are important to us architects. In Dresden, we recently completed the National Centre for Tumour Diseases - a building in which oncological patients and their doctors, therapists and scientists come into direct contact with each other, and where the focus is on future medicine, gene therapies, robotics - but also on spaces for communication that create trust.

— wörner traxler richter
Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

With the new NCT building wörner traxler richter have been able to realise a project which is only possible at very few university locations throughout Europe, linking interdisciplinary cancer research and cancer therapy as closely as possible under one roof. In the new building at the Oncology Campus of the University Hospital Dresden top researchers from all over the world will find excellent working conditions and oncology patients can benefit from state-of-the-art scientific knowledge. It has been an exciting task to give the NCT‘s medical significance an unmistakable architectural face - by developing an enduring architectural concept with a clear identity and a positive aura.

The heart of the new building is a unique research platform in the shape of a four-leaf clover. Four high-tech operating theatres and imaging rooms are grouped around a central control room. They include the „operating theatre of the future“ with its digitally networked instruments for computer and robot-assisted cancer surgery - plus state-of-the-art imaging, radiotherapy and laboratory units. In addition to forming the remarkable floor plan of this platform, the four individual leaves of the cloverleaf simulate the elements of NCT‘s research and therapy concept: oncological surgery, radiotherapy, molecular medicine and medical therapy. Patients receive the latter in the interdisciplinary oncology day-clinic on the first floor. Interdisciplinary work plays a decisive role for success in research and therapy - and an essential factor for this is „communication“. With different lounge areas, a spacious roof terrace and the adjoining bistro, the two-storey hall offers space for unconventional exchanges between scientists and medical staff while also providing a relaxed environment for both patients and visitors. The cloverleaf motifs located at these points provide a guidance system through the building in different colours: green dominates in the research cluster, yellow in the day-clinic, petrol colour in the laboratory areas. The motif is also found in the shiny white, futuristic-style metal façade and may of course also be associated with the luck of finding a four-leaf clover.

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Christian Börner

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© wörner traxler richter planungsgesellschaft mbh

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

Nationales Centrum für Tumorerkrankungen NCT, Dresden, Germany

© Frank Blümler

The biggest challenge?

The hospital-specific typological innovation can be seen in the cluster control room at the core of the ground floor. In this nucleus for high-tech experimental cancer research, surgical and imaging techniques are not only networked in a functionally and spatially impressive way, but also staged in a fresh and forward-looking way in terms of design. The exchange of ideas between scientists and physicians is obviously the focus of the spatial implementation of the internal areas.

For reasons of radiation protection, the protective rooms for nuclear medicine have been relocated to an annex of the building, which has been architecturally designed as a closed, encapsulated volume and shows its special position to the outside.

Construction time / duration

2017 - 2020

Project type

Research building with day clinic

Client

Universitätsklinikum Carl-Gustav-Carus Dresden

Architects

wörner traxler richter planungsgesellschaft mbH

Planning experts

Structural planning:
Leonhardt, Andrä und Partner Beratende Ingenieure VBI AG

Building services:
ZWP Ingenieur-AG

Medical planning:
mtp Planungsgesellschaft für Medizintechnik mbH

Landscape design:
Noack Landschaftsarchitekten

Building physics:
ITA Ingenieurgesellschaft für Technische Akustik Weimar mbH

Fire protection:
Statik- und Brandschutzbüro Borchert und Bucher Ingenieurpartnerschaft mbB

Awards

German Design Award 2022

ICONIC AWARDS 2021

AKG-Preis 2022

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