3×1 Healthcare Clinics: Placeless Case Studies and Formal Configurations

Actar, Clinical, estudio.entresitio, Low Density, Project

Denial of the context, Design process, Design strategies, Functionality, Health, In-between space, Inner courtyard, Madrid, Project, Public buildings, Spain

Published in "Clinical: An Architecture of Variation with Repetition", by María Hurtado de Mendoza, estudio.entresitio -- https://lccn.loc.gov/2017940716

3×1 is a trilogy of healthcare clinics that estudio.entresitio built in Madrid, Spain.
Why there were three may not be relevant anymore. It all started with an unusual competition to build two clinics for the same client (Madrid’s city council) with the same budget, the same functional program, and on two different sites.
Our answer to those initial conditions was to work with the idea of a “placeless building” as a strategy to insert a cohesive whole into irrelevant environments. A great sense of autonomy was required in formal, functional and even conceptual terms to allow the building to exist no matter where. This so-called placeless building takes on the opposition between hermetic and open as a conceptual framework and initiator for the project.
The third clinic came along later in the game as an expanded possibility for variation on the initial scheme.