Not only a high standards public hospital but also an architecture sensitive to the intrinsic characteristic, sustainable and human: this is the concept of the new Hospital of Sud Salento designed by Mario Cucinella Architects in Maglie, in the province of Lecce (Italy).
In fact, the field of healing environments aims to combine the efficacy and rigor of the technique with the creativity and warmth of a design that has a “humanization” purpose: this is the reason why the project treat the spaces destined for diagnostics, emergencies and the primary needs of the disease with the same design care of the spaces dedicated to the healing power of the environment.
The concept is a unitarian and iconic design, interacting with the particular morphology of the long and tight area, constricted between two road infrastructures: the architecture unfolds in three main volumes, developed on three floors, which like a living entity flexes and recedes over the limits of the lot, to protect and safeguard the most sensitive areas such the triage and the patient’s rooms.
These setbacks, which do not interrupt the internal functional connections between the different areas consents to realize some big landscape elements, a series of hills covered in trees, which further protect against noise and offer undeniable quality views to the patient’s space and to the work environment.
The proposed architectural complex, matured from the structural translation of the welfare functions (the form derives from the function), allows to allocate the areas of hospitalization (more than 400 beds) and the related diagnostic support activities (including the emergency-urgency area) in the two buildings located in the South while in the North are concentrated out-patient functions (clinics, withdrawals, dialysis, pre-receipt, etc.) and the care area for the mother and the child.
A new vision for a hospital conceived to enhance the healing power of nature and landscape.
Images Courtesy of Mario Cucinella Architects.
