Description

Standardization has been a key issue in architecture since times immemorial, and hospitals prove that the repetition of tested solutions is not limited to mass-produced housing. In this building category, standardizing ranges from floor plans for patient rooms, for instance, to the layout of outpatient departments. The three municipal healthcare centers designed for Madrid are exceptional for repeating the same floor plan, practically without alterations. If the program is identical, why should the architectural solutions differ? Local conditions did not matter: all three are situated in non-descript environments dominated by social housing (which is also often standardized). For all three sites, the architects opted for a sculptural solution of abstract volumes that, except for the entrance, are completely closed on the outside. At first sight, this gives the impression of a series of stacked containers: the height differs but the geometrical grid determines everything. According to the designers, these are placeless buildings – which implies that all places suit them equally well.

The interior of the health centers is a composition of public and private rooms alternated by 13 patios and accessible from three corridors that also link the patios, thus preventing the typical long and drab hospital corridors and creating visual links in all directions, but not with the world outside, which is manifest only in the sky above.

Only relatively simple medical consultations and interventions take place in these centers, which appear to anticipate a redistribution of healthcare services. The San Blas Healthcare Center was the first to open its doors. It is clad in concrete with the imprint of the wooden encasements clearly visible. It helps to prevent the composition of grayish volumes from appearing like a bunker – instead, it looks like an abstract work of art, the more so since the higher parts of the façades facing the patios in the interior are kept in a strong, dark color. Blue tiles and views on plants in the patios produce a surprisingly elegant effect, which clearly refers to the architectural idiom of classical modernism. The Usera clinic is clad in a golden aluminum mesh, and the Villaverde project – which resulted from winning another competition – repeats the main features of its predecessors but with a slight variation: it is clad in translucent, whitish and shining panels that give the building a transparent feel.

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Originally published in: Cor Wagenaar, Noor Mens, Guru Manja, Colette Niemeijer, Tom Guthknecht, Hospitals: A Design Manual, Birkhäuser, 2018.