Set out on a series of terraces amid lush vegetation facing the Caribbean, this 275-bed complex looks at first sight like a stand-alone holiday resort in its small scale and deliberate embrace of the outdoor environment.
Like the Medisch Centrum Rijnmond-Zuid, this inner-city hospital resists the centrifugal force of much recent planning.
The latest addition to this city-centre hospital site in Barcelona’s Eixample district, the new building had to complete a block occupied by early 20th- century buildings by architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner.
This project represents two of its designer’s key interests − the return of the hospital as part of a city block after exile to the outskirts, and the desire to create a universal form with the maximum inherent flexibility.
Most unusually for Switzerland, this acute treatment and emergency centre is being built to serve two adjoining cantons, Vau and Valais. The location was chosen both because of good motorway service, and because it was on the border between the two.
This competition-winning design for a cancer counselling centre is in the tradition of the UK’s Maggie’s Centres, recognising that where high-tech interventions are not needed it is apt to design on a more domestic, welcoming scale.
The main drivers in the design of this enormous complex were the desires to integrate it with its parkland setting and to break it down to a human scale.
Ancient civilisation advocated letting the wider world’s healing power flow through the body and mind, but the industrialisation of healthcare isolated patients from these larger contexts. From city centres to sylvan settings, today’s hospitals must reintegrate the public realm into the healing process
This is one of a new generation of local hospitals aimed at keeping key hospital functions close to communities while moving specialist acute and in-patient care to fewer larger centres.
