Beatriz Ângelo Hospital
The winning programme in a competition launched by the National Health Initiative was designed on a human scale, in keeping with a desire to humanise everything, which reflects the new paradigms of the doctor/patient relationship. The design is based on a network typology proposal, where the circulation and vertical communication scheme seeks to respond effectively to the intensity of the interactions and to a desirable functional flexibility; it was designed to allow for future adaptations and evolution in terms of the building’s lifecycle.
For this reason, the final design includes possible conversion and extension scenarios that are typical for a health unit. Over the extended length of the complex, it makes its claim in terms of the balanced composition between the volumes, landscape and infrastructures.
«There is an ever present, even obligatory, concept in the design of the hospital’s architecture: light as a symbol of life, knowledge and science. (…) The architecture reflected a desire to combine quality of materials with an elegantly minimalist aesthetic concept, harmoniously combining several large spaces.»
In the interior, the operational functionality is punctuated by greened courtyards and opportune openings in the facades. These light and life channels determine the humanisation of the space and break with the environment of relative harshness associated with the practice of medicine.