Baukunstpreis der Stiftung Städelschule für Baukunst 2012

The project for the new home of the Municipal Institute for Rehabilitation of the Disabled of Vicente Lopez rises to the public interest as a need to create a suitable place to accommodate the significant increase in patients with disabilities, considering that this Institute has served a historic role since 1956, been always open and for free to serve the entire population, and to reverse the precarious conditions and isolation of the old Institute in its relationship with the community.

An unusually inclusive and advanced public collaborative model was conceived for managing public works in the City, as for the multipart and transdisciplinary initiative of the different groups involved on the enterprise: the civic collaboration of the business community for funding and managing the project, the public collaboration of the city as the land owner and future administrator of the facility, the architects collaborating with the medical doctors team, the patients, urban design officials, politicians, neighbors, art and psychotherapists, hospital engineers, landscape architects, accessibility expert organizations, etc. Therefore, the work had to satisfy several different expectations, as an inherent part of the architecture: the general public interest of the community, the medical professional and patient’s purposes, the political and institutional prospects, and the engineering and economic forces, providing at the same time an innovative output, constructed efficiently at very low cost, be perfectly sustainable especially considering the near-zero maintenance over time, be clearly functional, and be warm and welcoming, primarily expressive of the needs for rehabilitation and integration of the patients.

The U shaped general volumetric scheme responds to creating a central public area, accessible as an extension of the sidewalk, offering a common healthy, sunny area along with providing the building’s generous ventilation and lighting. It forms a public plaza with landscaped vegetation where a new tree is planted so that it will accompany to the one similar at the other side of the neighboring wall, opening also physical communication with the ACCERVIL building that serves similar job-related rehabilitation functions. The required emergency ‘escape ramp’ is developed bordering this plaza at the same time of integrating a sun-block adaptive skin to the south wing façade. It is also intended for accessing and especially for training, becoming the real soul of the space design, as a dynamic and unifying element for the everyday patient’s rehabilitation experience. The successive offsets of the different gyms on top of each other generate a terracing section which favors the northeast/northwest sun lighting towards the courtyard.

The program is developed spatially as a 3-floor structure plus a basement that clearly organizes vertically the three big areas of the functional required Medical Program provided by the doctors. The ground floor fundamentally lodges the ‘Adults of 15 year old or older’ sector, the intermediate floor holds the ‘3 to 14 year old children’ sector and on the highest floor the ‘up to 3 year old babies’ sector, based on the patients different degrees of accessibility movements through the building. Horizontally, three differentiated areas are organized and articulated among them on the three different levels. More specifically to the ground floor the general Entry Access, the Waiting Area along with the direct Attention to the Public rooms, while vertical circulations are located in the center. To the south the adult Doctor's Offices and to the north all related to the Physiotherapist, Gymnasium and Swimming Pool, in addition to Sanitary Service and the basement access ramp. At the center of the first floor the children Doctor’s Offices, to the north all related to the Physiotherapist, smaller Gymnasium and to the south the Director’s and Administrative Services Offices. On the second floor the same scheme corresponds to the center with the babies Doctor’s Offices, to the north all regarding the Physiotherapist and smallest Gymnasium and to the south the Dining and Teaching/Auditorium rooms, which receive zenithal lighting from the roof. The basement holds the systems machinery and storage areas, the swimming pool’s bottom, a non excavated ground for the new tree roots, and a parking area for 22 vehicles, some of which are for handicapped parking and another 3 bigger lots for the Institute’s handicapped pool buses.

Materiality is predominantly determined by the exposed reinforced concrete and its endless plastic qualities, facilitated by the relative constructive simplicity associated to the labor availability and local craftsman’s ability, its economic feasibility, high durability and particular Institutional strength tribute to a public avant-garde practice in Latin-America, almost extinct by the low public investment. All the slabs are post-tensioned to avoid intermediate columns and allowing spatial flexibility, repeatability and adaptability for the multiple transferable functions, as required by new therapies constantly being incorporated. The structure itself becomes envelope including the side skin facades as continues hanging shot concrete screens, enclosed by large glass panels simply attached, with low and simple operation and maintenance, and lightweight interior divisions. The systems run along the circulation corridors accessed by removable panels.

The external appearance anticipates the building through its compound elements, through a raw character and presence at the institutional scale. These elements are at the same time dismembered and rearticulated into small displaced movements on the public front line, which configure and spatially qualify the decentered access, adding a certain subtlety which favors the recognition of the particular. Here, the perforated and trimmed great screen offers an external/internal atmosphere of shades and sharp lights, turning attractive by contrast the transparency and depth of the naturally illuminated courtyard. It opens a public hollow space as a ‘camera obscura’ for the discovery and acknowledgment of the profound and careful activity which operates within; this within a certain inconsiderate and flat anomy which characterizes this section of Maipú Ave.

Behind the screen, at the void between it and the building, an opening and release to the sky is formed, sequentially expanded in the shape of an inverted diaphragm, from where a great hanging leaning piece returns … ‘The hand of God’ as called by the people, a vertical threshold carrying for the patients that go through it, a consistent rain of the most praised daily Gift that they will receive in the building, the laborious hands of the doctors: the most pure Love.