The Hospital Clinic Metropolitano La Florida responds to the first proposal for Hospital Concessions in Chile – for non-clinical services – along with its namesake in the commune of Maipu. The project consists of 67,504 m², 391 beds, 17 surgical pavilions and 4 delivery rooms, 112 consultations and procedures, 555 parking lots and 224 seismic isolators: housing 1,500 officials.
The project is set on a 16,800 m² plot of land with very unbalanced proportions: 350 meters long by 50 meters wide, in a ratio of 7 is to 1. For this reason, and depending on the complexity of the program, the parameters of occupancy, constructability and height allowed were taken to the extreme, and a recovery of the built area on the first floor was sought on the roof roofs, as a green area for expansion. In response to the limitations of the land, 2 strategies were chosen: programmatic grouping in volumetric boxes, with the aim of recovering the size of the blocks; and setback of the façade, to transform the sidewalk into a public promenade, thus generating an anteroom to the building.
The first strategy is to generate the reading of "programmatic blocks" (psychiatry, consultations, imaging, emergencies), which articulate a 350-meter-long façade, probably the longest in Santiago. Modulation allows the measurement of the block lost in the project to be recovered.
The second strategy, the setback of the first two floors under the eaves of the hospitalization body, to the north, gives a more generous dimension to the pavement, which runs parallel to the waiting rooms of the building. Thus, it seeks to transform the existing sidewalk into a tree-lined public promenade, which reinforces the character of Froilán Lagos Avenue (formerly "El Parque") and is visually linked to the interior program.
The crowning bar that contains hospitalization on floors 3 and 4, advances to the building line to the north, generating a continuous canopy on the sidewalk that contributes to defining the proposed promenade by setting back the lower levels. The continuity of the perimeter strip of exposed concrete that confines the volume allows the unitary reading of this longitudinal body along the entire façade. This element accounts for the total dimension of the building and transforms it into a clearly visible reference in the distance, from the Americo Vespucio highway and the elevated metro (urban train) route.
The freed up roof on the third floor is intended for green roof, planted with different species of sedum, with low water consumption and moderate maintenance. This constitutes the natural extension of the public circulation of the hospitalization bar to the south, for rest and contemplation of visiting relatives, at the point where the views open up to the Andean massif, the entrance of the caisson and the Maipo valley.
