New Gaslini Hospital Genova’s project is based on the idea of a ‘Hospital-Garden’ by the sea. Starting from the call for tenders – which envisaged on the one hand the modernisation and maintenance of the existing building and on the other the construction of a hospital pavilion from scratch – the design proposal is based on the creation of a hospital of great excellence capable of combining healthcare, research and teaching in a coherent and integrated unicuum. The architecture of the Nuovo Gaslini speaks the universal language of emotions. Inspired by nature and its regenerative processes, this architecture is intended to be an invitation to the child to look at the world and the beauty of nature around us. It is a structure focused on the child and his or her treatment needs, which goes beyond mere therapeutic planning, guiding the patient to recover his or her life path as a person, and not only to recover from an illness.
For this reason, Pavilion Zero of the Nuovo Gaslini is conceived as a greenhouse in the park, overlooking the sea and open to the city. Its architecture combines the more human-scale typology of the pavilion with the more efficient one of the monobloc: above are the wards facing the park, while below is the large healthcare area lit by a central courtyard. On the ground floor are the public functions open to the city. At the top, a panoramic terrace open to all offers amazing views of the landscape.
Thinking of the wards, we designed them as the ‘temporary home’ of the sick child, in which to apply all the most innovative curative skills, while enhancing the healthy parts of his person, which make him resilient beyond all expectations: ‘not everything about the sick child is sick’, as Dr Giancarlo lzzi puts it.
There is a thin red thread that binds the whole Gaslini: it is the landscape, the true soul of the Hospital-Garden. For this reason, we have privileged the ‘voids’, designing permeable spaces, open but protected, through which to activate a system of visual relationships with nature. We have planned a series of courtyards and gardens, all different from each other in the degree of openness and the design of the landscape, but with the same common function of fostering the relationship of the Hospital with the park surrounding it, according to the principles of biophilia, whereby contact with nature favours processes of cognitive regeneration.
Characterising the building from above is an energy roof that contributes to meeting the hospital’s needs, designing the ‘fifth elevation’. The New Gaslini is conceived as an outpost of the city. In front of the hospital, we have in fact imagined a new square that recovers the proportions of the fourteenth-century cloister of San Gerolamo and gives back to the public domain a living and experienced place, where it is pleasant to stay and meet again.