ARCHITECTURE

Green for the eyes

Two projects connoted by different stylistic choices, though united by an underlying research aimed at achieving a specific objective: redeveloping a decommissioned area, restoring a space to the city that offers a complete integration between nature and building.
The projects in question are the new Hospital and the Banca dell’Occhio Eye Transplant Clinic in Mestre. This collaboration between Emilio Ambasz and Studio Altieri was converted into the driving force for the transformation of the entire city and this area in particular that, destined to host service structures, lent itself to becoming, paradoxically, a natural barrier, an urban park inside which the correct compromise between building and landscape is fully achieved.
A first glance at the plan reveals how the landscape has been attentively studied not to function as a frame, but rather as the main protagonist of the intervention: rows of trees planted to create a natural barrier against acoustic pollution from the adjacent railway, reflecting pools for eventual water reserves, hills and luxuriant vegetation that, beginning from the ground, work their way inside the building, becoming an integral part of it.In fact, the hospital resembles a large, partially buried plate, inside which six floors of hospital rooms rest on two levels above grade and one underground level. The various levels are connected by a large oblique glazed wall to the southwest that functions, in bioclimatic terms, as a greenhouse, and in stylistic terms as a filter between the interior and exterior, a zone inside which patients can wait and interact, walking along wooden paths winding between small natural planters.
The opposite façade, to the northwest, like the other, presents a shift in planes of approximately 2.5 metres, creating interesting terraced gardens overlooked by the patients’ rooms, each with its own private garden and an entirely natural view. A great deal of attention was focused on the study of patient needs, seeking to render a stay in the hospital as pleasurable as possible and minimising the possibilities for boredom and discomfort: the result is visible in the attention to details, the choice of interior colours and the realisation of the additional services that, while they may be considered collateral, are in some cases indispensable to the ill. Thus the offices, information services and care facilities, strictly tied to the hospital’s functions, are accompanied by commercial areas, restaurants, together with, and this is the true novelty, a nursery school and an auditorium. All designed to meet the needs of users and the professionals who work in the structure, as well as to render it a catalyst, at the urban level, for all citizens.Clearly, other than the aforementioned, many devices were employed to ensure correct bioclimatic design: active ventilated façades, greenhouses, cogeneration systems and ecocompatible materials.
The same area is also home to the socalled Banca dell’Occhio, defined by its explosive forms: two trapezoidal sails, each 12 m in height; entirely covered with copper bands, they appear to touch one another at their extremities, inviting us to enter the central courtyard, home to a series of terraced gardens that mark the various floors of the structure.
Behind the opposite façade are the research laboratories, offices and operating rooms, located above grade, while the underground level contains classrooms illuminated by a circular courtyard, beyond which is located a 250-seat auditorium.
Once again, there are many ecocompatible strategies, assisted by the correct positioning of the activities in plan, cantilevers and vegetation that offer shading and protection against excessive solar gain.The final project, what is more realized in the record time of a mere four years, is a centre of excellence in terms of technology, architectural and landscape design: the compromise and the synthesis between building and environment guarantees an admirable result, as well as an example for all new constructions that refuse self-referentialism and wish to insert themselves within a context that is social, urban and, above all, inhabitable.

Ilenia Pizzico