Sygehusgrunden: scanning the tuberculosis building

Building 4 on the former Holstebro hospital site, scanned in about four hours. The scan gives the future owner a precise picture of rooms, construction and inventory, so the next use can be drawn from what is already there.

Brick building with white stucco pilasters and a tiled roof, seen from below through green trees

From hospital to living district

Holstebro Hospital closed in 2022. Sygehusgrunden is turning the site, more than 80,000 m² in the middle of the city, into a new district with housing, business, culture and education by 2040. The whole area is to be certified at least DGNB Gold, and more than nine tenths of the building mass is to be reused. Every building gets a life cycle assessment, and one CO₂ account is made for the whole site.

80,000m²

transformed into a new sustainable district

9/10

of the building mass is to be reused

DGNB Gold

is the goal for the whole district

2040

the new district is complete

Building 4: the tuberculosis building

Old blue-toned postcard of the brick building with its white pilasters and pediment, captioned Holstebro Sanatoriet — A historical postcard of the building as the Holstebro Sanatorium. Photo: Sygehusgrunden.

Built for light and air

Building 4 was built in 1907 as a tuberculosis hospital, in a time before penicillin when fresh air, light and healthy food were the most important treatment. Today it still stands with many of its original details intact.

Its qualities are still there: a building made so that people could find peace and regain their strength in light and fresh air.

1907
Built as a tuberculosis hospital
1985
Rebuilt as a psychiatric hospital
2022
The hospital closes
2026
Scanned with ReUseX
?
New use, chosen by the buyer

The question

You can only keep what you know. The next chapter of Building 4 is written by its new owner, and what the building becomes depends on that owner. To draw a new use from what is already there, someone has to know what is in the building: its rooms, its construction and its inventory, and what is worth keeping.

The question for the pilot was how quickly that knowledge can be collected, and in what form.

The scan

The scan of Building 4 took about four hours and produced about 4.8 million coloured points from 7,048 camera frames, a complete digital record of the building as it stands today. Building 4 is the only building on the site we have scanned so far.

The whole building as a point cloud in true colour.

Inside the scan: a first-floor corridor, every dot a measured point.

A section through the point cloud opens all four storeys.

What the scan tells us

AI segmentation labels the points as walls, floors, ceilings, doors, windows, radiators, pipes and other building parts, in 18 different types, and places every part in its room. Each part can then carry its own properties.

One scan, several layers: true colour → component classes → individual components.

Every part can get a material passport: type, waste code, quantity, treatment, sample status and review. (Demo data.)

What the scan delivers

A 3D model of the building, with the point cloud as the basis
Every building part labelled and placed in its room
A resource list that can be reviewed, approved or rejected part by part