Sant Pau Hospital‘s Research Institute

The new Research Institute of Hospital de Sant Pau is a building conceived as a technological infrastructure with parameters of global sustainability. This gives a high comfort and functionality, an optimal environmental behavior, the reduction of costs and consumptions -both of materials and energy- and an optimal functionality considering the entire life cycle, both of the materials and of the building itself.

The building is organized with clear geometry volumes that act as mediators between the city’s road layout and the hospital, becoming one of its main accesses.

The facade is simple and efficient, based on sandwich panels with good insulation. These panels are protected by a technological ceramic skin as a latticework, with the same chromatic range as the historic pavilions of the modernist hospital. This skin produces a drastic reduction in energy demand (in a building with very significant thermal internal loads). In turn, it allows the entry of natural light and views and guarantees privacy to researchers.

Each floor consists in a rectangle of 80m x 11m without pillars or vertical downspouts, providing great flexibility, flanking an axis of 3m that houses all the fixed elements (stairs, patios, elevators, facilities, bathrooms). These spaces are divided only with screens and partitions, which can be modified with great ease and can berth every 1.25m to the façade without affecting it. These elements allow the building to be easily adapted even to substantial changes in use.

Flows relating the different uses have been carefully studied, in order to place them in the most advantageous situations. The most frequent routes are as short as possible. The incompatible routes are segregated, and it is provided wide interrelation spaces, well lit, allowing group meetings. These measures have allowed us to reduce the planned area by increasing flexibility and maintaining the functional program requested.

The construction systems are dry mounting, both the façade ceramics (Flexbrick), the fiber cement partitions, which allow to avoid supplementary railings and where the installations can be fixed (Euronit), the photocatalytic concrete base to the street that cleans the air of the city (Breinco), the vegetal cover water tank that allows to collect rainwater and use it for irrigation and toilets (Danosa) ...

Currently obtaining the LEED Platinum environmental certificate for this building.