2018 MCHAP
Fundacion Santa Fe de Bogota Hospital Expansion
Giancarlo Mazzanti Sierra
Bogota, Colombia
November 2016
PRIMARY AUTHOR
Giancarlo Mazzanti Sierra
CONTRIBUTING AUTHOR
Juan Manuel Gil (Designer ) Alberto Aranda (Designer ) Felipe Pombo (Designer )
CLIENT
Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá
PHOTOGRAPHER
Alejandro Arango
OBJECTIVE
The main condition that had to be resolved at a functional and urban level was the fragmentation of the existing complex. The new hospital was conceived as a connecting and articulating element that traces a longitudinal axis along the old complex, connecting the two opposite corners of the block with a pedestrian street for internal public use that ends in a public plaza. In this way, the project became not only a building but an urban order element. The hospital needed a building that connected and continued with its institutional image in a physical and material way. Brick was proposed as continuity of the material used in the rest of the hospital, but in a different way. A system of thin bricks was clipped into steel cables that created a veil of masonry, stretched though the whole façade, opening the hospital to the city and filling it with natural light. El Equipo Mazzanti’s proposal always had in mind that space is a stimulus that affects human behavior and that architecture is an opportunity to foster new relationships. For that purpose, we incorporated a tropical internal garden on the ninth floor that allows patients, families and doctors to have a ludic and natural space that can take them out of the hospital context and relate them to the outside. We want that the space itself becomes a mechanism of healing and relaxation, full of plants, birds and light.
CONTEXT
The competition winning design proposed by El Equipo Mazzanti, encouraged connectivity in a physical and ideological way to an original complex developed in the seventies for Santa Fe de Bogotá Medical Foundation. The Santa Fe is one of Colombia’s most important medical institutions and has always been committed to community service, education, and is devoted to contributing to the welfare of individuals and society in our country. The project is in the north of the city of Bogotá, in a lot occupied by diverse medical buildings arranged in a fragmented manner. The complex was the result of a process of adding architectural pieces that had answered to different programmatic needs from 1970 until today. Because of the scarce planned growth, the hospital became a labyrinth of flows and buildings without an apparent order. Our project not only created a new building to satisfy the hospital’s growing needs but also to create a new pedestrian connection in the campus. Hospitals are commonly synonyms of closed spaces, with a huge isolation among patients, family and doctors. In Colombia, interior spaces in hospitals usually have small windows and no places for recreation, their design limits to fulfil the medical function without considering human and psychic relationships. In this context, El Equipo Mazzanti looked to establish new relationships that allow the inhabitants of the hospital to improve their comfort conditions and have ludic spaces inside that help them heal.
PERFORMANCE
In the two years that hospital has been functioning, it has shown positive performance results in many ways. Proving that integrating nature to the process of healing, as well as environmentally friendly technologies, natural light, and friendly spaces for interaction and relationships has improve the quality of life of those spending time at the hospital. The solarium and the open relationship of the rooms with the city, have shown that families, patients and caregivers have better living conditions inside the hospital because they can interact in comfortable spaces and feel related to the outside world. Also, the average hospitalization time has decreased compared to the previous times of hospitalization in the old building, and in terms of safety of the patients, technologies and functional organization have shown to decrease medical complications. Moreover, the hospital has become a motive of pride for its inhabitants and has built a new culture of service and relationship between patients, family and caregivers. Finally, the hospital has received several recognitions such as the certification for compliance with the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. It has also been recognized for its design and attention as the first institution in Latin America to be certified in "Excellence in Person Centered Care" with Planetree in silver level and it has been awarded for the best design and planning of the ICU for adults, by the Worlds Intensive Care Unit association in association with the AIA.
