cms villaverde public healthcare center. madrid

the health center’s program is laid out extensively on a single ground floor. the various spaces of the program are arranged to form a sparse, irregular orthogonal grid, where 13 courtyards are staggered among the public and private rooms along three parallel (non-)corridors. In contrast to this light, courtyard-fragmented system, the hermetic façade is conceived as a continuous, blind mass of modulated glass.

the building resolves the contrast between these two opposing situations in a subtle way, expressed through the use of a tectonic construction system: a metal structure, and glass and polycarbonate facades with varying degrees of opacity and transparency. from the outside, the volume is designed to blend in, where the white glass reflects the surrounding space without allowing a visual connection between inside and outside, while at the same time remaining almost invisible. from the inside, contact with the outside through the vertical cladding is softened by the world of shadows; shadows cast on the translucent cladding reveal what is happening on the other side—pedestrians, trees, etc. the reflective and transparent qualities of the glass multiply the reflected symmetry, just as the reflective and diffused lighting qualities of the vertical translucent polycarbonate panels help create a spacious and luminous interior environment with a certain atmospheric quality.