Hainburg nursing home

Hofmeisterstraße, Hainburg an der Donau, Austria

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Hainburg nursing home

Hofmeisterstraße, Hainburg an der Donau, Austria

Firm

Architekt Christian Kronaus
KNOWSPACE architecture + cities

Type

Residential ›

YEAR

2009

SIZE

300,000 sqft - 500,000 sqft

Architecture: Christian
Kronaus, Erhard An-He Kinzelbach Collaborators: Stefan Gruber, Daniel Lopez-Perez Client: Uni
Credit BA-CA Leasing MAR Immobilien GmbH, Amt der NÖ Landesregierung BD6 and GS7 Project
management: Wolfgang Tillich Detailing and Construction
administration: Rudischer
& Panzenböck
Structural engineering: Markus
Kuhlang Photographs: Thomas
Ott CONTEXT: In an aging society and
due to the tendency in the industrialized west of extended lifetimes, the
typology of nursing and retiree homes and its architectural manifestations
increasingly gain importance. This happens especially in regards to these
buildings' relevance as people's last home in life. In Austria, the public
sector, in this case the state of Lower-Austria as the client for this nursing
home project, accepts this challenge.

The existing old
building of the nursing home in Hainburg was built in 1825 as a castle and
changed its use in the course of history for several times: after its original
use as a castle it served as an institute for army officers, as barracks, a
Russian military hospital and from 1948-1989 as the main hospital of the entire
region. Since 2000 it has served as a privately-run nursing home. Recently, the
state purchased the building and planned to extend it with a new building
housing 50 additional single rooms including their shared facilities.

CONCEPTION AND FORM: The new building's
volume - a double-storey, compact bar - is positioned perpendicularly to the
existing historic building. This has a twofold effect: on the one hand, it only
touches the old building punctually through a glazed joint, on the other hand
it frames the exterior front yard while preserving a maximum of the park and
trees in the back.
Form and structure of the
building aim at reconciling the repetitive nature of the program, the wood
structure and the need for a fast and efficient construction with the
inhabitants' desire for individual differentiation.

REPETITION AND DIFFERENTIATION: In order to deal with the desire for individual
differentiation, the project employs a strategy of a two-way fold, both on the
exterior and the interior. On the outside, the folding breaks the length of the
bar volume and allows for local differentiation by making each single-room
readable. Each room has 2 windows, one is a regular one and the other is
fixed-glazed and tilted, with a low parapet. The latter allows persons that sit
in the wheelchair or rest in bed to have an equivalent view out of the window.
The regular window is vertical and operable. The resulting niche in the facade
that it produces on the outside with its integrated pot can be used for flower
planting. Hence, each inhabitant is able to customize his/her face to the
exterior. Furthermore, the different tilted windows produce difference through
their alternating reflections of the surrounding trees and the sky.

On the inside, the strategy of the fold is
employed in the corridor walls. The folding marks each individual single room
and generates niches in front of
the entrance doors that can be occupied by the inhabitants in various ways,
thus rendering the corridor as more than just a space for circulation.
Furthermore, the folds shorten the length of the
corridor visually and they zone it.
Inside the corridor walls, the
folds create space for integrated mechanical shafts and built-in closets alike.
The latter contain nursing material that is accessible from outside the rooms.

The corridor has 2 common public
spaces at its ends. A recreational room is located towards east with views to
the close Slovak capital Bratislava. On the west, there is an open loggia with
views to Hainburg castle. In the center, in close proximity to the central
nurses' ward located at the joint between the old and new buildings, there is a
third common room facing south. All three common spaces have balconies/terraces
attached. It is this distribution of the common shared spaces that complements
the individual privacy of the single-rooms and supports social gatherings in
small groups among the elderly at every time of the day.

ADAPTIVE COLOR GRADIENT: In addition to the strategy of the fold, the skin
employs a second performative framework to break monotony and instill
differentiation, while maintaining overall coherence. The skin, not unlike a
chamaeleon, mediates between two predominant colors: the pink color of the old
building and the green of the recreational park in the back. It gradually
changes from one to the other, starting with pink at the eastern end of the
joint between old and new, changing to green and changing to pink again when
returning to the joint on the western side.
The skin is pixelated through the use of
diamond-shaped Eternit-shingles. A simple algorithm is introduced, based on a
combination of successive mirroring at the fold lines and the gradual addition
of pixels of one color while subtracting the other. This set of basic rules
allows for the described performance. At the same time, it keeps the manual and
systematic installation by the construction workers simple.

CONSTRUCTION AND FINISHES: In order to satisfy the need for standardization
in order to realize the complex geometry cost-efficient and in a short amount
of time, the building was built in timber panel construction with solid wooden
floorplates. The advantages comprise the dry mortarless construction with a low
deadload and the high amount of prefabrication with its benefits of precision
and speed. The single polygons of the walls that result from the folding, were
prefabricated piece by piece. The plumbing units were premanufactured as
fully-installed, light-construction boxes that only had to be plugged in
on-site.

In terms of finishes, the exterior consists of
diamond-shaped Eternit-shingles in 2 colors, while the interior is composed out
of wood surfaces, laminate and linoleum and wooden floors.

MATERIAL AND SUSTAINABILITY: The building fulfills low-energy
standard. In addition to the sustainability of the buildings low energy
consumption, a few ecological and sustainable materials were consciously
applied: the entire structure is made of wood, no reinforced concrete is used
above-ground. Only the lift shaft is not built of wood but fire-rated steel,
due to fire safety reasons. The thermal insulation is achieved through natural
flax, and the gravel bed under the foundations consists of foamed glass made of
recycled glass.