The concept behind our project proposal for the recovery of the former San Francesco hospital, for the creation of a new health center with the integration of the services distributed throughout the territory, stems from the desire to safeguard the historical value
of the nineteenth-century building (which is subject to verification of the cultural interest by the competent bodies of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage) and to connote the architectural image of the small extension as an identifying element of the health facility. All this always respecting the environment, aiming at a different way of building that aims to combine technological innovation, based on sustainability criteria, and aesthetic research. The project foresees that the nineteenth-century building is subject to only minor internal changes, leaving the original appearance completely intact. while for the new body of
factory we planned to use materials that belong to the tradition of architectural recovery of which Carlo Scarpa was the main architect, thus creating a material continuity between the two blocks that are united but, at the same time, detached from the architectural language dictated by time. The design choices concur to define a measured whole with simple and linear geometries. From a compositional point of view, the desire to dialogue with the former hospital and the surrounding environment, without renouncing the use of a contemporary language,
manifest in the alignment of the extension with the main front of the existing building, in the contemporary detachment from it (to leave the nineteenth-century building intact), in the replica - on the north east facade of the new building - of the
profile of the front of the former hospital and the insertion of a small winter garden to characterize the southwest facade.

The winter garden is a true bioclimatic greenhouse that allows you to maximize the collection of solar energy and contribute to the
air conditioning of the rooms. Consistency with the premises (creating a contemporary architecture capable of interacting with pre-existing structures) is also evident from solutions such as the glass and steel connection with the former hospital and the use of the "memory windows" located on the north-east wall (a sort of “splinters generated by the detachment of the 2 opposing facades.” In practice these are metal elements, externally colored like the wall, used internally as a support for photographs of Marradi and its territory and visible from the waiting rooms). We have rethought the distribution scheme of the expansion. If this has to be
(in our intentions) a sign capable of connoting the entire structure and hosting vertical connections (as per the request of the announcement) it follows that it must be configured as the entrance portal to the structure and host the reception so that anyone,
as soon as you enter, it can be accepted, receive the necessary information and directly access its destination.