Placemaker: Small but perfectly formed
Tenerife’s Ravelo Medical Clinic, designed by gpy arquitectos, was the recent winner of the Design & Health International Academy Awards Judges’ Special Prize. The award is given to a project submitted across any category that is particularly recognised for its salutogenic qualities.
 The outpatient clinic, which serves a small rural community, has been designed on two levels, both with street-level pedestrian access. The main floor is occupied by the medical surgeries for general medicine and paediatrics, as well as the nurses’ station and the administrative areas. The lower floor houses a small 24-hour accident and emergency service as well as multipurpose spaces for community activities and a staff area.
The clinic is used for various community services, and so it also fulfi lls a social function. Its main entrance has been adapted to accommodate the steep slope of the street, and makes the public space extend right into the building. This sense of openness continues with the inclusion of a large panoramic window adjoining the waiting room.
On the upper level, the medical surgeries are south-facing; the design of their fac¸ade generates an intermediate space between the interior windows and exterior folding shutters, which regulates the entry of sunlight. It is this feature that lends the building its bioclimatic character, while at the same time offering optimal lighting conditions for the workspaces. In these rooms, the natural light entering the building is filtered and reflected on coloured surfaces to create a comfortable, warm atmosphere.
A continuous internal wooden skin separates areas for specific medical uses from public areas such as the waiting room, stairway, corridors and reception area, and creates a contact surface which organises the routes through the building.
There is a dialogue between this timber interior, which transforms the framed empty space into a series of rooms, and the external concrete frame, open along the north-south axis, which gives the building a more urban feel. The clinic, which has been built on a steep hillside, is an intuitive and scaled response to its surrounding landscape. To the north, the concrete frame of the building faces the distant countryside, and the view from its panoramic window converts the public waiting area into a therapeutic space that is directly connected with the landscape.
The judges of the awards said of the project: “Although this building only serves a small rural community, it has a mature and authoritative presence. Its clear-cut definition adds distinctively to the uniqueness of its setting.”
Ravelo Medical Clinic, Spain
|
| Location: |
Calle Hoya de la Viuda, Ravelo, Tenerife |
| Client: |
Canary Islands Government and the Canarian
Healthcare Service |
| Architect |
gpy arquitectos |
| Site area |
1,106 sqm |
| Floor area |
706 sqm |
|
1.1.jpg)
|