The new Health Center of Talavera de laReinais located in the middle of a single family neighbourhood. Since the Center only has one street in front, the accesses for supplies, urgencies and for the public are located one after another.
A semi-public path diagonally cuts through the building ending in an open courtyard with the large staircase and the main entrance at the end. The main quality of this courtyard, however, will be to led people into the building complex and provide orientation for visitors.
The lobby is conceived as a spatial continuation of the courtyard. Inside, the building is planned as a single, open space that offers a transparent landscape in three floors.
The program is solved with three parallel bodies with North-South orientation, alternating with open “patios” that guarantee a pleasant daylight and illumination in the interior. Two volumes are clearly distinguished, one U-shaped around the semi-public “plaza” to which the waiting rooms open and another lower pavilion with his own courtyard where the urgencies are located.
The urgencies have an independent access from the street for the arrival of ambulances, under the projecting roof to protect it from the weather. From the urgency doors we get in to the lobby of patients with the zone of reception-admission and the waiting room of relatives. The medical residence is located at the backside of this pavilion.
The surgical block is easily accessible from the urgencies and occupies an independent position from the general circulations of the building.
The rehab-area is located in the ground floor,not far from the main access, with the physiotherapy visually united with the gym.
The Consulting rooms and waiting areas compose the mayor part of the program, around the courtyard with a back-to-back disposition,and waiting galleries that open to the “plaza”. They are interconnected in groups of three or five to assure a double circulation of patients and personnel. Both the personnel and public facilities occupy a central position within the building near the access and the main staircase. Finally, a garage is projected underground.
Both courtyards help to improve the environmental behaviour of the building, since through them we can obtain natural sunlight and better climate conditions for a great part of the building. The facades of the wide courtyard are treated as a permeable skin to the outside with great glass surfaces that are the most striking feature of the building. This envelope and the alternation of “patios” bring shades and reflect the light into the inner spaces. The building looks on itself, creating a new landscape in the dreary surroundings.
