Patients at this health centre on the outskirts of the French town of Selles-sur-Cher can look in towards a small landscaped garden or out at the surrounding fields while they sit in the waiting room (+ slideshow).
Paris studio Oglo developed a simple visual language of white one-storey buildings with vertical windows to unite the various healthcare facilities, which include the offices of doctors, a dentist, a nurse, a physiotherapist, a pharmacy and a medical laboratory.
“While preserving the autonomy of each health practitioner by creating independent spaces for each profession, the project’s architecture aims to reflect the unity that stems from the coming together of the different competencies on site,” said the architects.
Located on a suburban estate, the banality of the surrounding landscape led Oglo to position the buildings so they face each other and look onto a large landscaped area across access roads and parking spaces.
“By taking advantage of the zone’s low density, the project engages in a particular relationship with the landscape and the planted areas at its centre,” explained the architects.
Narrow openings punctuate the walls of each building and allow a soft light to enter the treatment rooms.
A waiting room at the centre of the complex features full-height glazing on two sides so patients can look out onto the courtyard or the fields beyond the buildings.
The project was financed by its occupants and the simple architectural style and choice of robust materials were a direct result of the need to minimise costs.
Photography is by Sébastien Morel.
Here’s some more information from the architects:
Pôle Santé Val de Cher, Selles-sur-Cher, France
We believe that one of the major challenges of multidisciplinary health centers is to encourage health professionals to practice in rural environments. With that in mind and in order to improve the conditions in which they practice medicine (office size, growing crowds, timeworn premises etc.), 12 professionals appointed Mister Alain Feraud in the fall of 2010 as their project lead. They put him in charge of organizing an architecture contest for 5 general medicine offices, 1 dental office (2 chairs), 1 nurse’s office (2 rooms), 1 physiotherapist office (6 rooms), 1 pharmacy, and 1 medical lab; Oglo was the winner of that contest.
The ability to adequately synthesize the needs of all, the unifying qualities of Alain Feraud, the investors’ attentive ear, and the deep trust that was established between the clients and the architects created the ideal framework for a project oriented as much towards the patients as towards the professionals who treat them.
Since the plot is incorporated in a tertiary activity sector with little density, without any particular landscape interest and away from living areas, the project tried from the onset to create a spatial inwardness while welcoming numerous personal vehicles. Forming a central courtyard, the buildings design a welcoming and unifying heart for the different health professions. The outside appearance of a dynamic landscaped path between the public space and the Pole Santé makes up a large garden open to the public.
While preserving the autonomy of each health practitioner by creating independent spaces for each profession, the project’s architecture aims to reflect the unity that stems from the coming together of the different competencies on site. The handling of one-story high elements, in accordance with the investors’ demands, along with the paved pedestrian pathways, further underline a certain architectural home character. The simplicity and lightness of the volumes built generate the indispensable calm to “heal” and “be healed”, while developing a rational and efficient work tool.
Patients navigate around the slightly opened curve formed by the exterior and easily find their way to the chosen practitioner. The main waiting room, in the center of the configuration, is part of a space composed on two sides of floor-to-ceiling glass windows, opening to one side on the courtyard and to the other on the landscape.
The vertical and relatively narrow openings of the offices provide the healing spaces with a soft and uniform light that preserves intimacy. They form a pattern on the exterior of each office and underline the unity of the project. The implantation of the volumes creates a dynamic process through the numerous view points and the different amounts of sunshine on each façade.
Section A
As the project is incorporated in an activity site, it also seeks to revisit a piece of territory whose architecture and usage are in principle not very attractive. By taking advantage of the zone’s low density, the project engages in a particular relationship with the landscape and the planted areas at its centre. The simple expressions and the use of traditional and reliable materials (isolation, partitions and acoustic ceilings…) have aimed to optimize construction costs as much as to ensure low maintenance expenses.
Section B
The total amount of those costs match precisely the objectives set by each of the professionals, who financed the totality of the project themselves. Beyond the financial aspect, with economic and social coherence in mind, the materials chosen have made possible the sole participation of local enterprises. The Pole Santé now represents an attractive medical legacy for the generations of professionals to come.
Section C
Architect: Oglo Project Team: Emmanuel de France, Arnaud Dambrine Mechanical Engineer: RBI Pharmacy interior design: Sartoretto Verna Year: 2013 Location: Selles-sur-Cher, France Client: SCCV Pôle Santé Val de Cher Client Assistant: Alain Feraud Project area: 936 sq m Site area: 5990 sq m Photos: Sébastien Morel
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Brains Unlimited is the name of this recently completed trio of buildings, which provides a neuroscience research facility for Maastricht University in the Netherlands (+ slideshow).
Designed by Dutch firm Wiegerinck, the buildings are located on the developing Maastricht Health Campus on the southern edge of the university grounds and provide a centre for both education and research.
The complex is divided into two wings. The first – spread across two buildings – accommodates teaching rooms and offices, alongside spaces for start-up businesses and university-run enterprises. The second houses an advanced scanning facility containing three magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners.
The exterior of each building is different, but all three were designed to feel like part of the same family.
“The design is based on an ensemble of building elements in a green inner area,” said the architects. “This ensemble of building elements varies in height and is given an architectural detailing that is expressed in great diversity within a certain degree of coherence.”
For the two blocks that make up the main wing, the architects designed gridded structures made from dark prefabricated concrete. For the six-storey block, they infilled this with red enamelled glazing, while the four-storey building features a facade of wooden panels.
The exterior of the single-storey scanner laboratory is made up of structural glazing and aluminium columns, and is described by the architects as having a “reserved, abstract design”.
Glazed corridors connect the three buildings at ground level, spilling out into a hall at the centre of the complex. This space functions as a reception and leads through to an auditorium just beyond.
Here’s a project description from the architects:
Brains Unlimited Maastricht
Vision to make the impossible possible
Under the leadership of Prof. Dr Rainier Goebel, the Cognitive Neuroscience department at the Maastricht University (Department of Psychology and Neuroscience) expressed its ambition in 2008 to further expand its name in the field of brain research. The department also wished to offer research groups and external parties the possibility of using advanced research facilities. The largest clients for this are start-up businesses and university spin-offs. They can rent space in the building from the Stichting Life Sciences Incubator Maastricht (SLIM). The new research institute is called ‘Brains Unlimited’.
At Brains Unlimited, scientists, entrepreneurs and clinicians work under one roof, undertaking research into the function of the human brain in order to gain new understanding and to develop clinical applications that can then be commercialised. Brains Unlimited also offers professional education in the field of neurophysics and neuro-imaging and it provides accommodation for spin-off companies in its BioPartner Incubator. The results of the research support the development of new treatments, diagnoses and technologies for such diseases as Alzheimer, Parkinson, epilepsy, schizophrenia and MS.
To fulfil its ambition, the university has built a new educational, office and laboratory facility for brain research. The education rooms (auditorium and classrooms), offices and laboratories are accommodated in the main building. The adjacent Scanner Lab houses state-of-the-art research equipment in the form of three MR (Magnetic Resonance) scanners. The most important asset is the fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanner with an ultra-high (9.4 Tesla) magnetic field of which only four exist in the entire world.
The intrinsic relevance of this fundamental research has convinced Europe, the Province and the business community to make the challenging financial running of this project feasible through subsidies and contributions under the motto ‘Vision to make the impossible possible’.
Brains Unlimited is the first project to be completed at the Maastricht Health Campus. The Health Campus is a valorisation campus where ideas and innovations from scientific research and practical care are developed (further) and clinically tested on-site. Work is currently being undertaken on the ‘Living Lab Limburg’ and ‘Particle Therapy Center’ follow-up projects.
Research concept
‘Synergy and meeting’ were the keywords used by the client and user when selecting the design team. This range of ideas offered the greatest chance of achieving the fundamental principles.
Brains Unlimited physically and virtually brings together education, fundamental research and industry. The meeting between these different ‘blood groups’ is essential for achieving the intended innovation and accumulation of knowledge. Forced and unforced contact was of primary importance in the spatial organisation of the building. In addition, the design team was selected on a ‘Total Engineer’ basis so that it was able to provide an optimum response to the requirement to work out the concept meticulously to the very last detail.
Location and fit
The planning preconditions were formulated by von Brandt Stadtplaner und Architekten on the instructions of the Municipality of Maastricht. The basis for these was the Master Plan for Randwyck Noord produced by Prof. O.M. Ungers in 1990, in which the aim is to achieve a pluralistic city structure using the “Stadt in der Stadt” theme. This theme involves creating ensembles that have a strong spatial interrelationship. The result is “Raumformen, vom Einzelraum über die Raumgruppe bis zum Raumkomplex” which together create a “Mikrokosmos, in dem die Komplexität des Makrokosmos reflektiert wird”. The diversity of function, scale and design of the built environment are accepted. Public space and green structures form important elements for creating clarity and cohesion in the area.
The site is located on the southern edge of the university campus. Brains Unlimited is the first project to be undertaken on the currently undeveloped strip of land that is enclosed by the Oxfordlaan and the Oeslingerbaan – on the north and south side respectively – and the Universiteitssingel and the P. Debeyelaan on the east and west sides.
The development line is to a large extent determined by two factors: on the one hand the building line on the Oxfordlaan and the Oeslingerbaan that has to be retained and, on the other hand, the existing stand of trees surrounding the historic skating rink which also had to be retained. This skating rink is used as an organising element for traffic management on the site.
Brains Unlimited is the first project of the university on this campus with a clear relationship to the ground level. After all, the first floor of all of the other buildings will be open to the public. Brains Unlimited has deliberately deviated from this in order to increase the human dimension, contact with the outside space and the liveliness of the area as part of the required synergy.
Design concept
The design is based on an ensemble of building elements in a green inner area. This ensemble of building elements varies in height and is given an architectural detailing that is expressed in great diversity within a certain degree of coherence. To support the image of City Walls and heterologous development within the walls, the main building is initially segmented into three smaller “modules”. In contrast to the City Walls, these modules are slightly offset from each other, creating an ensemble of smaller building elements.
The architectural detailing of the building elements is based on the theme of “unity in diversity”. For this purpose, all aspects of the floor tiles are visible like staves and thus form a strong Leitmotiv. As in the game of Dominoes, the last tile put down passes on half of its properties to the next tile and the same method has been adopted with the construction of the different building elements in the ensemble. Each building element takes over part of the previous building element but then adds its own aspects to this so that they still derive their own individual identity from this.
The southern building block (building element A) accommodates the SLIM Incubator and the central vertical access to the ensemble. The building element has a band structure with an infill. The protruding bands are made from dark-grey prefabricated concrete. The infill material consists of two red enamelled glazing units that are positioned randomly in respect of each other. The frames are made of dark-brown anodised aluminium. Perforated aluminium strips are placed between the bands. These are dark-bronze anodised. The strips act as a vertical sunblind and give the building a certain elegant lightness.
The northern block (building element B) accommodates the Department of Psychology. The structure is similar to that of building element A. The building element manifests more towards the garden side and therefore has an infill that is formed by planks of oiled Accoya wood. The vertical strips here are designed in a lighter bronze colour.
The entrance to the ensemble is formed by a separate, one-storey building. The building forms the link between the central hall and the Scanner Lab. The entrance building has a reserved, abstract design, consisting of aluminium bands and structural glazing units, jointed together using sealant. In turn, the central hall forms the link between building elements A and B; a joint between the building elements. It is a transparently designed volume consisting of a slender aluminium curtain wall with glass. The reception area and reception function are located in this volume. The physical link between building elements A and B is created using three footbridges, arranged above each other, that keep the transparency of the central hall intact. This hall therefore forms the synergy junction where all blood groups meet each other. The auditorium, espresso bar, reception, education rooms, kitchenettes and sanitary rooms are all incorporated in the hall.
Sustainability forms an integral part of the design concept. A number of passive structural measures have been incorporated first. The façade incorporates fixed structural horizontal and vertical sunblinds in order to protect against the direct heat load from the sun on the east, west and south façades. This saves on the cooling capacity required and guarantees an unrestricted view for the user. The choice of a column-free and beam-free span has also been evaluated for lifecycle costs. The other façade materials (glazing and preserved wood) have been selected on the basis of their environmental impact and maintenance requirements.
A number of energy-saving measures have also been incorporated in respect of the systems. These include heat recovery from the MR equipment cooling, CO2-controlled ventilation, natural ventilation, daylight- and motion-controlled lighting, choice of type of lighting sources, Building Management System control for equipment in stand-by mode, etc. A BREEAM-bespoke plan (ambition: BREEAM Very Good) has been instigated for the project with the Dutch Green Building Council. The Very Good score was achieved in the design phase.
The initiation phase for Brains Unlimited came about through collaboration with the European Union, the Province of Limburg, Maastricht University, MUMC+, Siemens, Forschungszentrum Jülich, the university’s property department and the end users.
Within its organisation the university appointed a compact core group that remained virtually unchanged from the moment of formulating the vision through to project completion. The core group included end users and the property department.
On the basis of vision and experience of complex projects, the design team was selected to be a ‘Total Engineer’ team, which means that it was assigned an extensive role. The design team became responsible for the design from landscaping to fitting out. There was very little change in the client team and in the design team. Personal involvement was essential for monitoring the design concept and the building quality.
When configuring the project organisation and selecting the consultants and contractors, the university always strived to achieve integration and compactness. Because of its technical complexity the ‘Brains Unlimited’ project was split into two sub-projects.
A European tender resulted in Siemens – as a supplier of state-of-the-art research equipment – being awarded a Design & Build contract for the Scanner Lab. Wiegerinck took care of the design up to the environmental permit level and then remained involved as aesthetic consultant so that the entire project was detailed architecturally as a single ensemble.
For the other building elements a call for tenders for the Total Engineer was issued at the same time. Five design teams were requested to present their vision for this project. Wiegerinck formed a compact design team together with Arup. All of the required design disciplines were represented within these two firms.
The tendering strategy and the associated selection criteria for the contractors were determined during the design process. This resulted in a tender for a single lot and an award of contract on the basis of the Most Economically Beneficial Tender in which price and quality (in the form of planning and action plan) were jointly evaluated.
Both the Scanner Lab and the main building were designed by a compact team. Architect, building services consultant, structural engineer and landscape architect worked closely together to arrive at the required building concept. Every last detail was discussed and agreed in order to achieve a strong degree of integration and high level of finish.
The construction processes commenced with a vision presentation by the design team to all of the persons involved in the construction phase of the project. This created support for the high level of requirements with regard to the quality of construction and the detailing. Intensive sessions were also held during the construction phase, during which complete agreement was sough between all aspects of the construction and the contractors.
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Kit Yamoyo, an “aidpod” that won plaudits for the way its packaging slotted into the gaps between bottles in a Coca-Cola crate, is being repackaged to reduce costs and increase the number of retailers that stock the product.
“For our supporters who find this move disappointing, I ask you please to keep focussed on the greater good,” said social entrepreneur Simon Berry, who announced the move in a blog post yesterday. “Our primary purpose is not to win awards.”
Berry, whose ColaLife organisation developed Kit Yamoyo, wrote: “We listen, we learn and we act. What our customers, in poor, remote rural communities are telling us is that many of them cannot afford the subsidised price tag. So the pressure is really on to seek every means to reduce costs.”
“Only 8% of retailers have ever put the kits in Coca-Cola crates to carry them to their shops,” he wrote. “This feature wasn’t the key enabler we thought it would be.”
The kit’s plastic blister packaging featured a removable film cover and a contoured container shaped to fit between cola bottles in a standard crate.
Referring to the numerous design accolades the product has garnered, Berry added: “I’d like to think we’d got these awards because of how the components of the Kit Yamoyo product and the packaging work so well together to meet the real needs of caregivers/mothers and children. The way the packaging is integral with the whole kit design, acting as a measure for the water needed to make up the ORS [oral rehydration salts], the mixing device, the storage device and cup.
“But deep down I suspect that it’s the fact that it fits into Coca-Cola crates that really gets the international community so excited. We totally understand this, that was our own starting point and that’s what got us really excited too. Initially.”
The new packaging (left) and the original crate-friendly packaging (right).
However Berry has concluded that putting the kit in a standard screw-top plastic jar would make it both cheaper to manufacture and more appealing to both retailers and consumers.
“At this point, the natural thing to do would be to relax and bask in the glory of all of this fabulous recognition of our work on something so meek as an anti-diarrhoea kit,” wrote Berry. “We are not designing sexy gadgets or cars after all.”
The kit contains sachets of oral rehydration salts, zinc, soap and an instruction leaflet, with the packaging doubling as both a measuring device to mix the solution and a cup from which to drink it.
It provides effective treatment for diarrhoea, which kills more children in Africa than HIV, malaria and measles combined. The product has been trialled in poor villages in Zambia, where 25,000 kits have been sold.
The original packaging was designed to slot into gaps between bottles in Coca-Cola crates.
Berry admitted in a radio interview last month that he was rethinking his distribution strategy and now feels that the reliance on Coca-Cola distribution has become a hindrance to adoption. “Interestingly, a move in this direction – away from the Coca-Cola crate – may help to make us more interesting to certain parts of the public health world who have seen the current Kit Yamoyo as a niche product that can ONLY be distributed in Coca-Cola crates,” he wrote on the ColaLife blog.
“This is not the case – the current Kit Yamoyo doesn’t have to go into Coca-Cola crates – but having a product format that does NOT fit into Coca-Cola crates may make the Kit Yamoyo more appealing to many in the public health sector.”
The new screw-top jar is made of preformed PET, which Colalife then adapt using their own mould. The product will continue to be distributed via crates in some markets.
A cluster of seven house-shaped buildings makes up this cancer care centre in Næstved, Denmark, by Copenhagen firm EFFEKT (+ slideshow).
Rather than designing the facility as one large structure, EFFEKT planned a series of domestic-scale buildings with gabled roof profiles and arranged them around a pair of courtyards on a site at the Næstved Hospital.
“Varying roof heights and materials means that the building will have its own unique architectural character that clearly distinguishes it from the surrounding hospital buildings,” said the architects.
White fibre-cement boards are arranged horizontally across the exterior walls and roof of each block, apart from two facades that are clad in vertical timber boards to signify the positions of entrances.
The building was commissioned by the Danish Cancer Society and provides a centre where anyone affected by cancer can find out more about the illness or receive counselling. It is located close to the hospital’s cancer ward, providing easy access for patients and family members.
Each house-shaped building provides a different function and they include a library, a kitchen, private meeting rooms, a lounge, a shop, a gym and a healthcare facility.
“The houses offer a wide range of rooms for informal advice, therapy and interaction with a focus on the user’s comfort and wellbeing,” explained the architects.
Two courtyards are positioned between the buildings and feature paved areas filled with garden furniture.
Bookshelves cover entire walls, integrating small window seats, while a mixture of homely furnishings feature throughout.
Other cancer-care facilities we’ve featured include a series of Maggie’s Centres, which were developed in the UK to provide support to anyone affected by cancer and have been designed by architects including Snøhetta and OMA. See more Maggie’s Centres »
Livsrum – Cancer Counselling Centre, Næstved, Denmark
Livsrum is EFFEKT’s project in the competition for a new cancer counselling centre at Næstved Hospital in Denmark in collaboration with Hoffmann and Lyngkilde.
The centre is designed as a cluster of seven small houses around two green outdoor spaces.
Each house has its own specific function and together they form a coherent sequence of different spaces and functions such as a library, kitchen, conversation rooms, lounge, shops, gym, and wellness facilities.
The house offers a wide range of different rooms for informal advice, therapy and interaction with a focus on the users’ comfort and wellbeing.
A varying roof height and materials used means that the building will have its own unique architectural character that clearly distinguishes it from the surrounding hospital buildings.
With the location of the cancer counselling centre close to the hospital’s cancer ward, it is set for a closer collaboration between hospital staff and the Danish Cancer Society.
Photograph by the architects
In the spring of 2013 the Danish Cancer Society staff and volunteers in Næstved expects to offer cancer patients and caregivers a warm welcome in the new cancer counselling centre.
Exterior 3D diagram
Client: The Danish Cancer Society Architect: EFFEKT Engineers: Lyngkilde Contractor: Hoffmann
Interior 3D diagram
Size: 740 square metres Type: Cancer counselling centre Site: Næstved, Copenhagen, Denmark
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The latest Maggie’s Centre for cancer care has been completed by Norwegian architects Snøhetta at the Foresterhill site of the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland.
Oslo-based studio Snøhetta designed the centre in collaboration with Scottish firm Halliday Fraser Munro as a curved pebble-shaped building.
Set to open later this month, the design features a single-storey reinforced concrete exterior and a timber interior.
Steel reinforcements were used to form the building’s outer shell, along with thick insulation moulded by hand to fit the shape of the building.
Activity and meeting rooms are primarily located on the ground floor, with a small mezzanine office space above.
The care centre is set apart form the hospital by a small landscaped area.
“In a world of architectural commercialism, it has been the most meaningful task to seek employment with spaces, materials and landscapes in the service of psychological and emotional healing processes,” said Snøhetta’s Kjetil Thorsen.
The Maggie’s foundation was founded seventeen years ago to provide emotional and practical support to anyone affected by cancer. There are a number of centres throughout the UK and one international centre in Hong Kong.
We published the plans for this building when they were originally released. Read the story here.
News: the creator of an anti-diarrhoea pack for the developing world that was named product design of the year for the way it fits inside Coca-Cola crates has admitted that “hardly any” kits have been shipped this way, and has dropped the strategy in favour of more conventional packaging and distribution.
“Putting the kits in the crates has turned out not to be the key innovation,” admitted social entrepreneur Simon Berry in a radio interview broadcast last weekend.
Instead, he said he is now focussing on creating a “value chain” to incentivise distributors and retailers across Africa. “That pack, sitting in that Coca-Cola crate, gets everyone very excited but it is quickly becoming a metaphor for what we’re doing.”
Berry travelled to the village of Kanchele in Zambia, where the product is being trialled, with BBC global business correspondent Peter Day as part of the programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
“I have to say Simon though, this is a bit of a con,” Day said on discovering the innovative strategy had been dropped. “You got this award for the design product of the year, very ingenious, very clever, because it fitted into a crate of bottles. You’ve abandoned the crate of bottles distribution now, so it comes in very conventional, ordinary packs. You’re nothing to do with cola now. In other words, the design is almost incidental.”
Berry replied: “We are piggybacking on Coca-Cola in the sense that we’re using their ideas, we’re using all their wholesalers, who are very well respected and know how to look after stuff, but putting the kits in the crates has turned out not to be the key innovation.”
“In the end, hardly any of our kits have been put into [Coca-Cola] crates,” he said. “Instead, what has worked is copying Coca-Cola’s business techniques: create a desirable product, market it like mad, and put the product in a distribution system at a price so that everyone can make a profit. If there is demand and retailers can make a profit, then they will do anything to meet that demand.”
Kit Yamoyo means “kit of life” in several African languages. The pack contains oral rehydration salts and zinc to treat diarrhoea, and a bar of soap. The plastic outer shell, which was originally designed to fit in the gaps between bottles in a Coca-Cola crate, doubles as a measure and cup for the medicine.
Diarrhoea kills more children in Africa than HIV, malaria and measles combined. Last April, Berry’s kit was named winner of the product design category in the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year awards.
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