Puerta de Hierro Hospital

One of the challenges of the project is to strike a balance between respecting the valuable existing structure—Bosch Aymerich's formidable original design—and adapting it to the requirements of a hospital that is at the forefront of contemporary hospital design—efficient and orderly in clinical terms, energy sustainable throughout its entire life cycle, and friendly and welcoming to people. Therefore, the success of the project also lies in making good use of the opportunities offered by the existing building. This is possible.

[1] With geometric and technical rigour to precisely organise the hospital programme and establish a clear and segregated hierarchy of circulation routes—public, clinical, and supply and support—making the most of the unique sinuous configuration of the existing building. On the floors above ground level, all clinical service spaces are grouped in the central corridor, and all rooms are in the east and west corridors; patient living areas and dining rooms are always to the east and west. On the lower floors (-1) and (-2), the workspaces are located to the south, and the more technical and service areas are always in the east bay, which is less sunny.

[2] With the logic of the movement of all road traffic linked to the hospital's services—staff parking, various supplies, and waste disposal—being resolved in a small space to the east of the hospital, and to the west, the independent public accesses on its two levels, floors (-1) and (+1), with universal pedestrian and road accessibility on both.

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[3] With a very precise design of the technical installations which, with maximum efficiency and robust and sustainable active and passive systems, resolve the difficult geometric and spatial fit that allows the volume of the original project to be maintained on the floors above ground, without machinery on the roof; and making the geometry of the building's fire compartmentalisation redundant with the distribution system of the installation networks —three fire compartments per floor, with independent risers per area and three independent horizontal networks—.

[4] With an industrialised, prefabricated construction system for its façades that maintains the formal qualities of the original project and recovers its materials and components, while also providing thermodynamic advantages, adding spatial and sensory richness to the interior spaces and the exterior appearance of the hospital, and whose industrial assembly makes its construction quick and reliable; and with the careful fitting of the hospital programme so that interventions on the load-bearing structure are reduced exclusively to the opening of holes for installations and for the reorganisation of the vertical communication cores, and so that all new constructions intended to house the installations are located outside the footprint of the building, with almost no modification to its foundations.

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[5] Taking advantage of the open nature of the building and the position of its landscaped open spaces, to the north and south, at different topographical levels, and its easily accessible, open connection with all floors of the hospital. And with the design of these gardens, which are different and varied, some more leafy and others more open, including different elements —watercourses, a pond, a greenhouse and an outdoor living room— that multiply their possibilities of use, at different times of the day, by different patients and family members and at different times of the year.

[6] With a “palette” of materials, colours and details that create a warm and “natural” atmosphere, linked to the physical and mental well-being of those who will use it — patients, family members, and medical and service staff — and which is part of the “humanist” architecture of northern Europe that inspired Bosch Aymerich's original project; which also applies the most advanced techniques and scientific knowledge, both indoors and outdoors, for a therapeutic design that relies on the “healing” power of architecture.

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