At the start of the 20th century, the city of Lyon had to increase its hospital capacity to meet the needs of the population. At that time, the mayor of Lyon, Edouard Herriot, asked the architect Tony Garnier to create the blueprints for the project. In 1933, a veritable "garden-city for the ill" was inaugurated in the heart of the city. Designed in suburban fashion, the hospital covers 156,000 square meters, with open, sunny, and flowered spaces, as well as a whole network of underground galleries in the service of healthcare.
The challenge of this project was to meet the new needs of the Lyon population, in particular regarding the evolution of pathologies, the aging of the population, and the changes in treatment methods. As the central pavilion no longer conformed to the contemporary working conditions of the professionals and to the comfort of the patients, the Lyon Civil Hospitals (HCL) and the Ministry of Culture agreed to demolish it in order to build a new structure better equipped to meet current hospital needs. This was to be integrated into the Grange Blanche site while safeguarding the cultural heritage of Tony Garnier.
