Valentina Chisci Case Studies

New Children’s Hospital Dublin, Ireland Architect: BDP Client: National Paediatric Hospital Development Board Size: 165,000m² Completion Date: Ongoing

The new children’s hospital (NCH) project located on a shared campus at St James’s Hospital comprises 125,000m2 of clinical, research and education space and 40,000m2 of shared support and underground car parking.

It will bring together the services currently provided at three children’s hospitals into a modern, custom-designed, digital, hospital at St James’s campus, to deliver the best care and treatments for Ireland’s sickest children and young people. As well as playing a central role in the provision of acute paediatric healthcare services, the new children’s hospital will be the primary centre for paediatric education, training, and research in Ireland. It will be a child-centred, world-class facility that will support innovation and excellence in paediatric healthcare, and create an environment that is supportive of children, young people, their families, and the hospital’s staff.

New Children’s Hospital

The design concept gives the new hospital a strong identity that is unlike any other hospital. Deliberately so, as the intention is to break with the institutional mould of traditional hospital designs and create an innovative environment – one that not only meets the highest clinical standards but is also uplifting, engaging and child and family-centred.

The design evolved out of extensive dialogue with many stakeholders, including staff from the three children’s hospitals, with families, young people and children who are former or current users of the service, and with local residents and businesses. The Design also maximises the therapeutic benefits of outdoor space, daylight, natural ventilation, and break-out spaces for patients, families and staff that offer opportunities for learning, play and distraction as well as respite from the clinical environment.

The entrances lead directly into the hospital from the LUAS, the South Circular Road and the underground car park will make access as convenient as possible for patients, visitors, and staff.

Matta Sur Community Health Centre Santiago, Chile Architect: Luis Vidal + Arquitectos Photography: Aryeh Kornfield Size: 5,499 m² Completion Date: 2021

The city that takes good care of its cultural heritage is the city that listens to its past without neglecting its future. This delicate balance between memory and contemporaneity is what a perdurable architecture, committed to contributing to society, provides. Those are the cornerstones for the Matta Sur Complex, and this is Luis Vidal + architects approach to what responsible design means: A contribution to the social dialogue with an environmental commitment.

The result is an unprecedented building refurbishment that gives back to the city of Santiago de Chile one of its most iconic constructions. Past, present, and future merge in a building that combines modernity with tradition, technology with sustainability, innovation with respect for the city’s heritage.

Matta Sur Community Health Centre

The Matta Sur Complex consists of two buildings located within the same plot: the former Metropolitan Lyceum of Santiago, built in 1891, and restored to host social uses such as a nursery school, a gym, or an auditorium; and a newbuild construction which will accommodate a CESFAM (a Public Primary Healthcare Center).

Both buildings have a total built area of 5,500 m2 that will give support to a community of more than 30,000 users. Along with these buildings and articulating them, there’s the public plaza, located in the centre of the plot, that provides the community with an open space to promote social encounters, thus becoming the heart of the project. Luis Vidal + architects accepted the challenge of, on the one hand, restoring this historic building, and on the other, designing a new-build construction that integrates harmoniously into the whole. Therefore, our new interventions aim to translate the most singular elements of the preexisting building but using a contemporary, austere language that does not compete with the historic building style but enhances it.

A careful analysis of the preexisting building, combined with a delicate and conscious design that involves materiality, spatiality, functionality, rhythm, sustainability, façade studies, and light are the key aspects of the proposal. As a result, Luis Vidal + architects achieve its goal: to retrieve and reveal the building´s original architectural and aesthetic value, while establishing a dialogue between the historic building and the new.