The winning proposal for the new Panama City Hospital, designed by TASH, is based on the design of ecological protections and passive bioclimatic strategies. The project is configured as a city, it is in no way a single building but a complex, keeping the capacity of total intercommunication between different buildings in a way that benefits from the different synergies, general systems, logistics, production systems, waste disposal, etc, avoiding element duplicities and improving the general performance of the complex, thus giving sense to the concept of a hospital city that is at the core of the project. More images and architects’ description after the break.
Developing as a consequence of its well-known canal, Panama enjoys a golden age, as its increasing economical investment in infrastructure development to attend to its growing population reflects. That is the reason why la Caja de Seguro Social de Panamá recently called for a competition for the construction of the biggest and most modern health care facilities in Central America, that competition has been won by TASH with a proposal of a city hospital composed of different volumes generating a complex relating interior-exterior space gaps.
Due to the different proper needs of a first row modern hospital as well as other physical conditions such as orientation and lot location, the different elements of the hospital city are distributed following a linear model. This model develops throughout an axis that connects all pieces with themselves and with all general systems this way it takes advantage of synergies as was previously mentioned.
In every situation the architectonic shape is product of the topologic relations derived directly from the function itself, containing the buildings architectonic expressivity as well as their height, structure, orientation and circulation disposition and hierarquization, number of floors, relative position of each piece in the general complex, this way this relations are adapted to the specific needs of the use they contain.
Architects: TASH (Taller de Arquitectura Sánchez-Horneros) Location: Clayton, Panamá Authors: Emilio Sánchez-Horneros, Antonio Sánchez-Horneros Collaborators: Javier Rodríguez, Emilio Gómez, Alberto Di Nunzio, José Manuel López-Fando David Melar, Javier Acedo, Álvaro Cabrera, Carlos Martín, Nieves Somacarrera, Antonio Calvo, Cecilio Aguilera, Ramón Acedo Structural Engineering: BERRA ingenieros Technical Engineering: JG ingenieros Client: Caja de Seguro social de Panamá Construction: FCC Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas Project Area: 210.000m2 Project year: 2011 Budget: 587.000.000 USD Photographs: TASH
