Hospitals, practices and care facilities: project documentation and technical articles on healthcare buildings and their specific requirements.
Housing for the homeless often consists of stacked contain ers. While the overnight shelter designed by Hild und K utilises prefabrication, thoughtful details adorn the robust building through which the Munich-based office conveys impres sions of warmth and home.
An interview with Lukas Burkhart and Ognjen Krašna:
The Wulingshan Eye Stone Spring bathhouse by Vector Architects is an unexpected combination of industrial aesthetics and poetic beauty.
From a teapot to the new construction of a clinic: limits of scale don't exist for the Southern Tyrolean architect. Currently he utilises his holistic visions for rehabilitation hospitals in Germany: healing architecture.
The right light at the right time can have a positive effect on people's health and well-being. In addition to the type of light source and spatial situation, greater consideration must be given to the time of day and the influence of daylight.
The Elsa Urquijo practice is located in the historical city centre of Corunna in an older building with typical Galician gallerias. These glazed, unheated oriels were originally used to store food or to dry washing. Elsa Urquijo has pragmatically converted them into spaces to house building material samples, books and files. But her studio also contains other objects that lend it a sensuous, relaxed note. Her work as an architect covers a broad spectrum. She first made a name for herself with a fashion-shop design for the textile manufacturer Zara. But she has also executed projects with a social content for the Amancio Ortega Foundation. Detail spoke to this successful, yet seemingly shy architect in her office.
Since 2007, student design and construction projects have been carried out annually in Africa under Professor Hermann Kaufmann of the University of Technology, Munich. In contrast to normal project work, this programme involves schemes for real situations. The idea of combining practical with theoretical activities has a long tradition in architectural teaching, but it is rarely offered on a regular basis at European universities. At a time when constructional activities are becoming increasingly abstract and complex, this link between design and simple, but genuine, building tasks offers students of architecture an opportunity to gain experience and reflect upon the implementation of their projects. Even more important, though, the design process is set in immediate relationshiip to constructional laws as well as economic and organizational constraints.
Healthcare buildings need to meet strict functional requirements. How to realise them with high quality design when budgets are small? The restructuring of the paediatric department of the university hospital of Parc Taulí offers an answer to this question.
The new University Children’s Hospital in Zurich unites state-of-the-art medical infrastructure with near-nature architecture that conveys to young patients and their families a sense of comfort. Ample wood, light, and endearingly humorous details create a healing environment.
A signal against stigmatisation: Following a restructuring process the hospital for mental health became the centre of a residential neighbourhood. Behind the protective envelope, the buildings by C. F. Møller Architects offer spaces of brightness and variety.
In a smart way, Pasel-K Architects combined medical primary care, social counselling, and village infrastructure in compact volumes in the Seltenrain region. The model project serves as a guiding example for the German healthcare system
A hall with inviting character and comfortable atmosphere welcomes visitors in the new health centre in Copenhagen. Few are seriously ill, but suffer from excess weight, high blood pressure, or other ailments caused by unhealthy lifestyles. In the health centre, they receive counselling and take part in a broad range of sports and cooking courses.
The architecture office Patterns converted a warehouse from the 1940s into a health centre with generous open spaces. The floor plan structure resembles a cluster, providing opportunities for changing services and flexible occupancy.
The little town in Styria previously lacked a clearly defined centre, similar to many other rural settlements. The architects created two new longitudinal buildings that enclose a village plaza in conjunction with the parsonage and the church. They arranged open access balconies along the residential buildings in order to create transitions between private and public spaces. On the reverse of the new volumes, they established uninterrupted open areas by creating balconies.
A number of years ago Paris implemented an ambitious climate-protection plan foreseeing a major reduction of the region’s greenhouse gas emissions and seeking to limit energy consumption to 50 kWh/m2 per annum. The metropolis has initiated a number of pilot projects to improve the energy standard. One such project is the “L´ îlot Fréquel-Fontarabie” in the 20th arrondissement. On one part of the site a new building with 20 subsidised apartments has been completed.
A grassy hillock near the carpark was almost the last piece of land left unsealed or undeveloped in the grounds of St James's Hospital in Leeds. Now the most recent of the Maggie's Foundation support centres has been completed there on a site measuring roughly 1200 m². However, this did not mean the loss of the last green area, on the contrary: a luxuriant garden now flourishes on top of the three stepped, overlapping roofs of Maggie's Centre and around the building.