As part of a harmonious recovery from the decade-long crisis Greece has gone through, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation launched a programme in 2017 to support the National Health System that aims to not leave the less central regions behind in terms of services improvement and adequation. Renzo Piano Building Workshop's response to this call is intended to be an anthology of guiding principles for an innovative recovery process.
Piano is building, with completion scheduled for 2025 for an investment of around $750 million, three facilities on the Greek teritory: the University Pediatric Hospital of Thessaloniki, and the General Hospitals of Sparta and Komotini.
The three projects are reunited by a holistic vision of sustainability not as a mere style but as a programme of performance and experience for all users of a treatment and research path: those who are treated, those who assist, those who work. Nature plays a crucial role in such vision of architecture, just as it did in ancient times in the healing temples dedicated to Asclepius, the god of medicine: the dialogue connecting the structures to the landscape, the continuity of interior spaces with parks, vegetation and open “healing gardens”, are a fundamental element in projects that are structured principles of biophilic design, by the idea of nature as an active participant of a healing experience.
Conceived as a campus, the University Pediatric Hospital of Thessaloniki will provide local secondary and tertiary pediatric services and national-scale Mental Health services for children and adolescent, clustered in a main building. It will also include a Research Center with educational and training spaces for the academic medical faculty and research laboratories . The design shows a close attention to global user experience built on a deep relationship with nature - with interior spaces featuring transparent and permeable connections to an outdoor park, to encourage dialogue and support - and the need for proximity and interaction between users (there is an extra bed for each clinical bed)
Both Sparta and Komotini General Hospitals are modular buildings interacting with the surrounding landscape.
In Sparta, a single three-story volume of about 115 meters will be situated in front of and parallel to the existing hospital, with supporting medical functions arranged on three levels below ground, built against the slope of the hill, facing the valley towards the city, a mental health department with dedicated garden and access, and multisensory “healing gardens” for the rehabilitation of patients with sensory disabilities .
The Komotini hospital is a three-storey building as well, hovering at the same height as the tree canopies of the 70,000-square-meter existing park around , its level 0 screened by greenery and the sloped contours of the site, giving the sense of a lower, more domestic scale.
With sustainability as a key design value - which translates into reducing energy consumption, recycling materials, even generating energy - solutions are chosen such as timber construction (cross laminated timber floor panels, glulam columns and beams, and a wood facade), photovoltaic roof cells, 30 km of geothermal wells providing 100% of healing and part of the cooling, orienting the project towards being carbon-zero-ready, with a certification goal of LEED Platinum.
