The pediatric clinic project fits into the identity of
the site, and it becomes an integral part of the nature that it is around, a
recognizable and mimetic space at the
same time.
A place where you can identify, that you can feel home
for materials, colors, light.The theme drives to be interested in the site, to
understand the lifestyle, the issues of a different culture as the African one
can be. It invites, also, to discover its richness so as to offer the
opportunity to express and to merge my own technical and cultural know-how with
the local one, to create a space that beyond to be functional, could be inspire
well-being and could give a “housing
feeling” , a sense of belonging to the place.
The pediatric
clinic is developed as a “linear village” that coagulates along a crossing
path.
The project is defined by several elements: the isolated
volumes for the clinical functions, a double wall equipped for clinical
services, both covered by a rising roof canopy. The wall is the limit between
the medical and family areas.
The space in between the solid elements, as well as streets
and square in a village, allows the circulation and the intersection of
patients and medical fluxes. These squares, three for the phase one, have been
thought as meeting point, waiting, teaching and recreational areas.
The first square is the waiting area for the parents at the
entrance.
The second one is a central jointing point and it is an open space that can be used for HIV
teaching area too.
The third one is on the last part of the clinic, open
toward the landscape, it is the teaching and recreational area.
On phase two, or in a different configuration of the
building, it will be possible to multiply and to modify these spaces.
The paths, on first phase, are mainly horizontal, it is
possible to climb on the top of volumes,
with wooden stairs, and use them as outdoor covered rooms. On phase two, the accessibility
grows up with mini-lift too, if it will
be economically possible, and with bridges suspended on the roof, between the volumes.
Clinical rooms will be created on volumes roof using light panels. The clinic structure consisted in two rising surfaces of wooden beams and pillars, covered by a
corrugated metal sheet, and near to the wall covered in transparent PVC sheet to light the paths.
The wooden volumes contain the clinical spaces.
These spaces are private and intimate lighted with high window.
All spaces are protected by a grid system for security
that allows a free visual to the landscape, and it is open during the day.
A double wall
in local stone or brick contains the services rooms for patients, medical
staff, and families.
The walls collect rainwater from the tilted roof and
transfer it into a open fountain that fill up the well.
Solar and photovoltaic panels on the roof, following
the sun path, contribute to the energy and hot water supplies.
A light roofing
cover the families area.
All these structure are based on a local wood platform
raised from the soil with integrated facilities.
On phase one the building is proposed as a mainly flat
configuration. The flexibility and the constructive characteristics allow to adapt
it to several soil typologies, even on terraces, dividing the building in
different units.
The building
form interprets the constructive characteristics using the local materials,
recombining them in a different configuration.
The variety and the analytic fragmentation of voids, in
consequence of the volumes placement, is
synthesized by the rising roof canopy and the platform,
that reunifies the image complex in the landscape.