New Pordenone Hospital

The location of the Hospital offers a unique opportunity for integration into the urban fabric, easily accessible by public transport or through bicycle routes. Thanks to a thorough knowledge of the area and an approach combining the construction of new buildings, the demolition of existing structures, and the restoration of pre-existing buildings, it was possible to integrate the new hospital district into the surrounding context.

The never-ending dialogue with the context resulted in architectural elements interacting with the surrounding urban fabric, creating a functional and welcoming space designed for the needs of patients, health care staff and citizens in general.

Citizens are offered the opportunity to visit the facility not only for health-related reasons, but also to use the common areas. In this regard, a crucial role is played by the public area dedicated to daytime and outpatient activities, which offers services related to treatment and prevention.

The compact, regular, and modular architecture of the Hospital is shaped in six building bodies identifiable as a plate dedicated to general services, on which rise four elements that are parallel to each other and separated by green spaces, housing most of the healthcare functions and services. A dedicated reception wing and a lower two-story body dedicated to outpatients complete the overall design.

The volumes of the inpatient wards are set back from the outpatient building facing Montereale Street, to avoid affecting the city street axis thus maintaining an urban dialogue on a human scale. The presence of large courtyards allows for optimal natural lighting of the rooms designed for the continuous presence of users, putting them in continuous relation with the external environment. To facilitate orientation within the facility and promote a serene atmosphere, some spaces that offer panoramic views of the courtyards and surrounding vegetation were designed.

Plan simplicity, which facilitates a clear separation of flows and allows optimization of the paths of hospitalized users, underlies a strategy that facilitates direct and short movements between departments. Careful planning of the vertical connections has not only speeded up movement, but also AGV handling and the general procurement of medical supplies.

The structural strategies adopted for the Hospital feature maximum simplicity, while proving extremely effective: from the seismic point of view, the reduction of structural masses and the implementation of floor diaphragms allow a reduction in the incidence of materials.

As to plant and systems, in order to reduce consumption, the Technology Hub accommodates both trigeneration plant and heat pumps. The Hospital integrates a system for energy recovery of heat that, produced by technological and diagnostic machinery, is transferred via multifunctional units to the departments that need heat. The use of primary networks with a high thermal jump allowed the use of smaller diameter ducts.