Hedwigshöhe Hospital, Berlin

DETAILS

Site: Berlin, Germany
Use: Healthcare

Description
The project moves within a force field between the dense urban spaces and the open landscape. The new hospital, Hedwigshöhe, forms the key hold for Falkenberg, a garden city near the southeastern outskirts of Berlin. The new is related with the existing hospital, which at his turn was constructed using a great villa from the XIX century with magnificent gardens.

The great horizontal volume of the hospital extension contrasts with the less dense, more dispersed buildings of the psychiatric area. In its dimensions and its geometry, it connects with the small scale of buildings of the garden city, and this define the smooth boundary of the park.

The center of the new hospital is a great square which signals the end of a sequence of urban spaces along Höhensteig, the southern access route serving the garden city. The different parts of the hospital are grouped around this central square, which distributes and links them all together in the manner of the historic square in one of the old towns in the vicinity of Berlin.
The terraced garden, which continues to the east from the existing villa, might be said to maintain or even to recover the original baroque structure. There will be no building in this part of the site, thus effecting a return to the pleasing historic relationship between garden and villa.

The psychiatric units are formed by two-story courtyard house that have been displaced to form the soft boundary of the new hospital where it meets the park. The six psychiatric units are accommodated in six free-standing buildings, of which four open directly onto the landscape, while the two intensive observation units are oriented towards the interior. In particular, the garden is an important part of the process of getting well. In terms of their dimension and distribution, these buildings are based on models of community or ‘sheltered’ housing. The layout of the units makes for an interesting graduation from the narrow street to the courtyard to the open landscape.

Project Name:Hospital Hedwigshöhe
Site:Höhensteig 1, 12526 Berlin, Germany
Use:Healthcare

Project date: 1995
Construction start date: 10-2002
Construction end date: 2008
Property: St. Hedwig Kliniken Berlin
Land area: 15.722 m²
Floor area: 23.300 m²

Authors:Manuel Brullet i Tenas, Alfonso de Luna i Colldefors, Albert de Pineda, Xavier Llambrich (Pinearq), Joachim Staudt, Christian Huber (huber staudt arch.)
Contributors: Miquel Lacasta, Albert Vitaller, Charo García
Builder:Gerüstbaü Reschke
Photographer: Werner Huthmacher, Jordi Bernadó, Friedrich Kugler, Juny Brullet
Awards:
01- 1st Prize, International Competition
02- Honorable Mention, BDA Preis Berlin 2009
03- Selected Work, 1st Catalan international architecture show 2014
Publications:
01-world-architects.com (link)