Healthcare Architecture: The Latest Architecture and News

Aurora is the title of Henning Larsen Architects’s entry for the new university hospital in Odense, Denmark. It was recently named among the three finalists. The iconic building complex provides an ideal framework for quality healthcare in the region of southern Denmark. The new Odense University Hospital (OUH) embodies an innovative building of high architectural quality, designed to meet the requirements and challenges of tomorrow. Like the goddess Aurora, the hospital finds renewal in the transition between old and new – and the conversion from tradition to modernity. The human scale supports the conception of the hospital as ”the good host” and a place where patients and visitors can easily orient themselves and feel at home. When approaching Aurora, you are met by an inviting and recognizable urban scale, where the complex is divided into varied units with each their clear entrance and reception area.

Late-2010 projects for our seventh selection of previously featured health architecture. Check them all after the break.

Barwon Health Teaching Training & Research Centre / Billard Leece Partnership This project challenges the view that clinical interiors need to be limited in colour or texture. Using a limited achromatic palette of external materials, the perception of a vibrant visceral-like interior is heightened in this integrated clinical teaching, training and research centre in Geelong, Australia (read more…)

KLab Architecture shared their latest project, a Placebo pharmacy in Athens, with us. By wrapping the existing orthagonal footprint in a dynamic circular skin, KLab has created a sophisticated spiraling form which seeks to create a relationship with the rapid motion of Vouliagmenis Avenue, the urban artery on which the building stands. The 600 sqm structure houses a pharmacy on the ground floor and ancillary office space on the upper mezzanine. Clad in metal panels that are perforated using Braille – a move that both alludes to the system’s use on pharmaceutical packaging and boosts visibility by allowing the light to find its way into the interior – the compositional quality of the material selection creates a polished exterior that attracts passers-by.

More images and more about the project after the break.