After almost 20 years of disuse, the complex “ex Ospedale Geriatrico” (former Geriatric Hospital), whose oldest parts belong to the second half of the 19th century houses, starting from the academic year 2019/2020, the departments of the New Humanistic Pole of the University of Padua.
The complex covers an area of almost 15,000 m² in the city centre, the project volume is about 104,000 m³ with a total GFA of about 20,000 m².
The intervention involved the demolition of some buildings and the construction of new ones, the recovery of the nineteenth-century structures and of the main body facing Via Vendramini.
In the middle of the campus, inside the oldest buildings, there is the central library of the Pole, articulated on 10,000 linear meters of shelves on an area of about 4,200 m² , with 372 seats.
The complex includes also didactic and computer classrooms of different sizes, several offices and a new structure / auditorium / conference room, overlooking Via Vendramini, with about 500 seats.
The technological systems were designed in accordance with the most current environmental sustainability and energy efficiency principles, becoming themselves the study subject of a university research team.
The basic air conditioning of the buildings is provided by the exploitation of a geothermal field composed of 60 boreholes 120 m deep, combined with proper ground source heat pumps; any consumption of methane gas has been eliminated.