Valverde Health Center

The new Valverde de Leganés Health Center focuses on programmatic clarity, structural regularity and versatility, and sustainability and climate conditioning by passive means.

Regarding programmatic clarity, all its spaces are structured in medical units for the different specialties around a central spine. This spine houses a sequence of courtyards of medicinal plants, as well as waiting rooms and circulation spaces. The central spine structures the circulations in a closed loop, avoiding crossovers between staff and patients, and ensures the proximity of the waiting areas to all the consultation rooms. In addition, the center’s scheme groups together the medical units into two large groups, one for emergencies in direct relation to the ambulance drop-off, and the other for primary care and other specialty consultations. Both blocks are directly accessible from the main lobby, which serves as the central point of the complex.

The structure of the building is made up of a series of precast, prestressed concrete elements (columns, beams and hollow core slabs). This represents an economical solution that is quick and easy to assemble, while at the same time offers durability and regularity. This structure is housed on the exterior facades of the building, as well as on the interior facades of the courtyards. The modularity of this system allows the potential redistribution of all the interior spaces, so that the center’s layout can be modified over time and future obsolescence can be avoided.

The materiality of the Health Center responds to its local context, as well as to environmental sustainability. For instance, the façade is clad in traditional ceramic brick. This material is economical and easy to supply, and requires a very low level of maintenance. In addition, it is cheap and quick to install, given the local knowledge. The high thermal mass of the ceramic facades softens the extreme temperatures to which the building is exposed in winter and in summer, minimizing its interior climate conditioning loads.

In short, the new Valverde de Leganés Health Center is a versatile and sustainable building. It integrates optimally into its context, and proposes an efficient way of laying out its medical care program.