VID HEALTH CENTRE, NOVA GORICA, SLOVENIA / SLOVENIA, 2002
written by Lidija Dragisic / photo by Blaz Budja
 
Something for the sick at last! An end to the vile, dark, dilapidated and cramped premises in which the visitor feels that all illnesses are much worse even than they are. As against this a pleasant natural sur¬rounding is a balm for their ailments. A new ray of light and health at last has shone upon their lives.
We are talking of the new Vid Health Centre, which was created through the teamwork of an infor¬mal group of three young architects: Adrijan Cingerle, Bostjan Furlan and Bostjan Kikelj.
As a group they have designed their own ap¬proach to the creation of an architectural concept. They think, that is, that today with increasing fre¬quency projects are created that do not have the right attitude to the space. Putting up a building in the space is a big responsibility. Architecture can completely degrade the space, it can keep it the way it is, or enhance it; for this reason, while mak¬ing their plans, they take into account the results of the geomantic analysis of the location. With this analysis they can set up a consistent harmony be¬tween the original magnetic field of the site and the internal rooms of the building. The main aim of this is to provide the clients with the best conditions for their sojourn here. They endeavour to put contemporary approaches into the spatial points of departure, ap¬proaches that show a reflection of today's time.
The main point of departure for the health centre is what the pleasant and calming surrounds have on offer for patients and employees, completely different from what we are used to in most hospitals or health centres. The analysis shows that at this location the energy system is constructed of two lines. These are the main and the local energy line, which cross in the main energy centre, giving the whole area a basically warm and pleasant character. The lines dictated a markedly elongated building, conceived as a series of parallel walls.
The walls that define the four parallel volumes inwhich the programme of the health centre is located have turned into the main theme of the plan. The emphasis on and extension of the walls outwards make possible a symbiosis between the artificial and the natural landscape. The strictly placed orthogonal walls that bound the functional and programme corn¬- plexes are bounded by a central ellipsoid body meant for the common area.
The linear concept is used too with respect to the organisation of the internal plan. The main access to the building runs along the local energy line that cuts across the series of walls erected. The ellipsoid part, an exception within the stringently geometrical forms, is oriented to the approach road and marks the crossing of the two energy lines. The gradual transition from outside towards the interior of the facility hints at the reworking of the borjac-a, the typical Mediterranean entrance into a house. The impera¬tives of the specific features of the landscape, that is, of its invisible fac¬tors, give the whole of the building a very distinctive character.
The individual functional volumes stretched out between the linear walls contain various features of the health centre: a common waiting room, the surgeries of various specialists, opticians, recovery rooms, admin, operating theatres. The central multi-purpose area is meant also for occasional exhibitions, and for children and the bar. Individual surger¬ies are organised as more intimate "pockets" of the common space.
The architecture of the medical centre is oriented to man, nature and their mutual interlinking. The inter¬weaving of nature and light comes out particularly in the central volume with the common areas that with their light, ventilation and views onto nature have a beneficial effect on the visitors of the centre. These qualities are in total opposition to what is common in the cramped waiting rooms common today. The cen¬tral double height area also has a Mediterranean di¬mension, coming in design terms out of the typology of the coastal area porch.
This young group doesn't submit to trendy effect architecture, but draws strength instead from the tried and tested expression of modernism. The purity of the white envelope and the narrow ribbon-like apertures recall the Mediterranean architecture that you can find in Iberia. The architecture works calmly and in a lei-surely way. The dominant verticals of the extended walls give a kind of dynamism and are spatially at one with the natural surrounds through which the individual functional volumes weave their way. Their different heights optically lower the large building on the little plot.
As against the right angles of the architecture, the landscaping of the external area is based on organic forms: on drops, ellipses, hills. The green areas were created with a maximum exploitation of the relatively little plot, and by placing the building on the very edge of the site. The large grass areas, the pines planted alongside the stream, give the visitor a pleasant feeling of nature. The cherry and oak trees preserved on the plot give an additional charm to the surrounding area.
The interior of the building has retained the elemen¬tary purity, restraint and simplicity of the exterior. The uncluttered space is based on light tones with shades of green. The significance of the interior elements lies in their structure and material, with the colour being of secondary importance and is derived from the space the way it is. The idea of the unclutteredness and sim¬plicity of the space backs them up in terms of function. The internal ambiences work as an area of purging and voiding, as a liberation from the satiation of the quotidian.
The atmosphere of the space, its openness, the in¬terrelations of its component parts and the way it melds together with the external space create a highly utile and poetic architecture for the health centre. It turns out that the "prescription" of these young architects has been borne out. This is a health centre that really seems healthy.