The Sanatorium La Manche is situated in the polder landscape south of the Bay of Mont-Saint-Michel and west of the Couesnon Canal. Aligned to the Abbey mount the Sanatorium is a mirror island offering retreat and therapeutic treatments for a range of pulmonary conditions.
As an architectural island in an agricultural landscape, the Sanatorium seeks to engage with the greater ecology of the Bay and its fragile ecosystem by connections with water, the water of the adjacent designed wetland and the canal beyond. In this way, the architecture operates as an eddy between the Couesnon Canal and the sea, channelling water through its walls, beneath its bridges and below its stair towers, flooding its internal lake, discharging back into the Canal and the Bay beyond. The Sanatorium is a form of de-polderisation in miniature whereby land reclaimed for farming is offered back to the sea through designed rupture.
The architecture treats the human body and the ecosystem. By introducing water from the wetland into the Sanatorium it establishes an intimate relationship between body and water through therapeutic treatments: steam rooms, resistance hydrotherapies, aerobic exercises and aromatherapies and a designed landscape of internal views across, adjacent to and above water. An enclosing wall houses residential and therapeutic programmes, a rainwater treatment system and a singular elevated view to Mont-Saint-Michel. Bridges and reading towers animate the internal landscape, connecting and activating programme whilst creating viewpoints both internal and external. A laboratory and flower garden, library and acoustic performance space complete the programme.
