Maggie's, the UK charity famed for its cancer care centers designed by world-renowned architects, has released a proposal for a new building designed by Heatherwick Studio. The new center is planned to be built on the grounds of the St James' University Hospital in Leeds, and was submitted for planning permission this morning.
The design consists of a series of stepped "planters" which aim to harness the therapeutic effect of plants for the benefit of the center's users. The building's public and private interior spaces are woven both in between these elements, and into the interior space of the planters themselves.
Latitude Studio’s entry for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) design competition to expand its Geneva headquarters seeks to embody WHO’s sustainable and collaborative approach to enhancing universal health. Their design consolidates individual offices and open workspaces within one facility, maximizing areas for collaboration and communication, while solar panels and rainwater collection systems improve the building’s sustainability. If chosen, the proposal would become one of three main buildings at the WHO headquarters.
Finnish firm Verstas Architects has been awarded first place in a competition for the expansion of Finland's Lapland central hospital for their design of a functional complex of "healing architecture." Responding to the challenge of Finland's aging population and changes in municipal funding, the winning proposal reflects the "hospital of tomorrow," creating a flexible and functional space in conversation with its urban surrounds.
Biophilia: Our Evolved Kinship To Biological Forms
The organized complexity in artifacts and buildings, as I have described it, leads to a positive response from users. This is the perception of “life” which we sense in certain structures and places in the built environment. The physical structure of the world has a massive effect on human beings. A crucial task of architectural theory is to explain and predict the impact that living structure — or its absence — has on us.