MANACOR REGIONAL HOSPITAL

Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Built m2: 29,500

Material Execution Budget: €22,000,000

Year: 1992

Completion date of work: 1996

Promoter: Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs, National Institute of Health. INSALUD

MEMORY

Conditioned by the location and size of the site, the Manacor hospital is a high-rise building, isolated and with views of the landscape. It consists of an extensive ground floor, which is sometimes doubled and occupies practically all the available space, and a linear block standing out vertically in which the hospital rooms are housed. This prism, an authentic unit of habitation that also contains the circulation cores, is configured and sized according to the fixed nature of the spaces it contains, while the multiple dependencies located on the ground floors form a more diverse and flexible agglomeration enclosed within an irregular perimeter.

All the systems that make such a large and complex building work, the installations and machinery of all kinds, are raised above the ground and remain partially visible, showing that they are capable of being modified and replaced if necessary without interfering with the interior. This applies both to the more voluminous installations on the ground floors and to those of the hospital building itself. The roofs are therefore the most characteristic feature of this complex and at the same time the dark, chromatic counterpoint to the predominant whiteness of the built volumes. It is also the roofs that are entrusted with the image of a building marked by strong contrasts of scale and character derived from the nature of the parts that compose it.

These contrasts coexist with a certain ambiguity regarding the orientation of the complex and the hierarchy of its facades, while front and back are emphatically proclaimed in the treatment of the high block, only the position and the figurative emphasis placed on the main entrance prevents the building from being perceived as a haphazard set of built episodes barely legible from the outside.