The new hospital is located between Monopoli’s and Fasano’s centers, in Puglia, in the south of Italy, in a place characterized by large carob and olive groves of great landscape value.
The starting point for defining the new hospital's form was the analysis of the area’s characteristics, to base the design on values of respect and enhancing the strong points of the zone, having the least possible impact on the surrounding landscape. The building is located in the mid part of the site, ensuring an optimal level of privacy and sound insulation, while maintaining an appropriate distance from the perimeters.
The project envisages an easily identifiable building structure model, congruently inserted into the existing landscape context. The hospital is divided into modular, autonomous, and multifunctional units, connected by links that allow maximum interrelation between all the functions executed in the hospital complex.
The hospital is divided into two floors above ground and one underground. The logistics and technological part of the hospital is located on the underground level, while the remaining two are organized by care intensity. In the northern part, near the entrance, the outpatient clinics, the emergency room, the diagnostic area, the surgical block, and the intensive care unit stand. In the southern part, private and facing Murgia, are the hospitalization units. The interspersed courtyards allow the landscape to penetrate the building, guaranteeing maximum sunlight and natural ventilation, consequently obtaining a direct relationship between the patient and nature, which acts positively on the inpatient and mitigates the psychological discomfort associated with hospitalization.
The link between these two areas is created by a large double-height space lit from above, in which the public functions of the hospital are located, such as coffee, conference rooms, shops, and places of worship.
Structurally, the building is characterized by a modular mesh designed to accommodate the hospitalization room and medical consultation modules. Modularity ensures flexibility and allows a possible future transformation of the building.
The hospital design tends towards the Green Architecture concept to integrate architecture into nature, physically and visually, between the green areas and those intended for patients and visitors. This architecture favors its domestic character and environmental control and represents distinctive characteristics of the therapeutic experience. A direct relationship between the patient and nature is encouraged, creating opportunities for meeting and socializing in the shared spaces of the various environments.
The compatibility between vehicular and pedestrian use of public spaces has been resolved with a road system inside the hospital based on fragmented parking islands concealed in the landscape; reserving for pedestrian use the public spaces equipped in direct relation to the building.
The use of pergolas and wooden brise-soleil on façades and roofs, using materials from the local Mediterranean tradition, contributes to mitigating solar radiation on the building. The building has renewable energy sources, developing an integrated vision of the design concerning the environmental quality of the users, energy efficiency, profitability, management, and maintenance. The irrigation of the green and landscaped areas will be carried out through a cycle of accumulation and reuse of rainwater included in the broader and more generalized program of use of sustainable resources and renewable energies on which the design of the building is based.
Respect for the environmental values of the rural ecosystem has shaped the urban and environmental strategy, which tends to satisfy the main goal of the functionality of the new regional health facility through an integration solution in the existing morphological and landscape layout.
The construction of the new health center seeks to integrate coherently into the rural environment and reconnect with the environment, consolidating the shape of the place and preserving the natural characteristics of the landscape to promote a sustainable model of health care.
