Merano Hospital, Italy
Sector: Competition
The competition brief for the new Accident and Emergency Department and support facilities at Merano Hospital provided a challenging and exciting opportunity to design a great new asset for the hospital, town and local community.
Merano is a beautiful town located in a spectacular position in the foothills of the Dolomites. The region has a rich architectural heritage and a recent history of constructing sensitive yet progressive new buildings.
The challenge was to live up to these standards whilst designing a highly effective, functional modern hospital facility. An A&E Department is driven by vital organisational requirements, which were here further complicated by the desire to reorganise the existing facilities whilst keeping the department operational.
Our design aimed to provide a friendly welcoming building that reduced the sense of the hospital as a large impersonal institution. The design uses features of local and regional architecture, such as timber cladding with typical details, as well as extending the grass roofs of the hospital. The space frame structure enclosing the plant equipment and vertical circulation cores provides a striking way of enclosing the required volumes whilst evoking the mountainous setting.
