Gynaecological clinic | Cantonal Hospital, Lucerne
Gynaecological clinic | Cantonal Hospital, LucerneCompetition 1994 | 1996 - 2001
Project manager: Reto Padrutt, Dipl. Arch. HTL
Photographer: Nique Nager, Lucerne | Margherita Spiluttini, Vienna | Heinz Unger, Zurich
The new women’s clinic is a free-standing building on park-like, designed grounds. Through the placement of the head-end building, the approach to the hospital centre is perceived as a generous square and garden area and accessed via elegant outdoor stairs or a wide ramp at the entrance to the gynaecological clinic, with its broadly projecting canopy. The building is embedded in the terrain and picks up on the two development directions of the existing facility. The form’s structure follows defined functional units: a head-end building with general facilities and treatment rooms, three towers with staff rooms and a wing for beds. The volumes are grouped together by the exterior façades, with their uniform envelope: transparent glass for the “panorama windows”, non-translucent enamelled glass for the ventilation wings and associated frames, opaque enamelled glass for the closed and partially translucent façade panes. The intensive use of glass gives the volume a light expression, while also ensuring the maximum possible daylight inside.