Jean-François Milou, the lead designer and founder of studioMilou, an architectural firm based in Singapore and Paris, won the international competition in 2007 to design the National Gallery Singapore. This project transformed two of the country’s most significant monuments, the former Supreme Court and City Hall, into Southeast Asia’s largest visual arts institution.

The spectacular adaptive reuse of these former from judicial and municipal buildings to a 21stcentury gallery with multiple new functions required sensitivity and exacting standards to ensure that their symbolic and structural significance would be fully respected. It also required of the architect, a Singaporean PR of many years and member of the Singaporean Board of Architects, full-time involvement in the project and an unfailing attention to detail.

Recently a patient in Paris, and now in convalescence, Jean-Francois Milou shares his thoughts and observations as an architect on hospital design from a perspective at once intimate and professional.