Carcavelos Health Complex

Located in the suburban fabric of Carcavelos, the Health Complex brings together family health, psychiatry and drug addiction services around a new public garden. Set along the site’s northern edge, it protects the garden from traffic noise while remaining permeable to the southern residential area. The garden opens visually to the eastern landscape, while a curved canopy unfolds across the site, giving architectural identity to the whole and generating a luminous, welcoming atmosphere. Built entirely in exposed concrete, the building forms a tectonic backdrop for the garden’s vegetation.

The project balances the rationality of a medical building with the social and open character of public space. The building adapts to the site’s topography, framing the garden and generating different levels of permeability within it: a more sheltered lower level to the east accommodates the drug addiction service, ensuring privacy for its users, while a covered open passage to the west, below the psychiatry service, connects directly to the parking area. The building’s layout is linear and efficient, structured by a central technical spine that concentrates infrastructure and allows flexibility for future adaptation. Within this rational framework, a curved canopy unfolds as a connective element within the garden, linking entrances, extending circulation outdoors and creating shaded spaces for interaction such as the cafeteria terrace, a children’s play area and a community garden — key spaces that support social prescribing and everyday well-being.

The building is defined by its monolithic use of exposed concrete, a material chosen for its structural efficiency, durability and expressive neutrality. Cast in situ, it forms both structure and enclosure, its façades revealing the modular rhythm of the consulting rooms and exposing construction as architectural language. The curved canopy, also in reinforced concrete with a green roof, contrasts with the strict geometry of the main volume, unifying the ensemble and providing shade, rain protection and rainwater absorption that mitigates flooding and surface heat. The compact form, thermal mass of concrete and use of shading and native vegetation improve energy performance and comfort. Photovoltaic panels supply clean energy for self-consumption. The rational interior layout and central technical corridor optimise infrastructure, reduce costs and simplify maintenance, while coherence of form, structure and material reinforces the project’s tectonic clarity and unity with the garden.