Psychological Medical Center

The building is located next to the main health centers of the city (Vic), surrounded by a park on the outskirts, and its program is basically developed on a ground floor to facilitate the mobility of its users. Around a central acces pavilion are grouped the rest of pavilions with their specific program, adapted to the original terrain topography and separated from each other by gardens and orchards. The interstitial spaces between the acces and those perimeter pavilions are occuped by the connecting ramps. The austerity of using a single cladding material for façades and roofs contrasts with the appearence of vegetable greenhouses on the south façades as a passive bioclimatic system and the use of wood as a main element in the interior spaces that reminds us that is a living material in a continuous evolution.

From the beginning, the project was considered as a participative process between client, professionals of the center, public administration and architects. The main challenges were to achieve that in the same building, mental health and addiction problems were attended from the social, sanitary and labor area and to integrate diverse users profiles (adult, children, homeless...). Departing from the particular needs of each labor department, floor area was optimised and services were grouped together to create a new, much more flexible functional program agreed by all the professionals of the center. This grouping of services and the versatility of the spaces has resulted in a more economic construction and maintenance and an anergy saving. With the public administration worked the implementation of the building in its environment, managing to integrate it in a green zone to increase the realtionship between building and nature and visually protect it from existing buildings around it.

The building has an economical, modular and high efficiency energy system that allows the adaptation of energy demand according to the interior occupation and the external climate. A 6m. with metallic structure every 2,40m. supports a lightweight, ventilated vaulted cover. The roof section allows to open the roof cavity in summer to ventilate it and close it in winter to mantain the heat and radiate it towards the interior. The vegetable greenhouses on the south façades are a passive bioclimatic system. These spaces have a practicable closure based on ultraviolet protected pvc curtains that can be closed in winter to accumulate heat (introduced to the interior through the ventilation system) or opened in summer. The vegetation in these spaces is cultivated by the patients themselves as a rehabilitation therapy. For a more sustainable building we made the decision to provide the climate contribution through a district heating/cooling option. The sustainability criteria have been essential during the construction process and have used natural and recycled materials. The Energy Certification places our building in the “A” category, the most efficient.