ANALYSIS
Venice Hospital by Le Corbusier
Venice Hospital Analysis
when
2018 . Fall
where
what
Research analysis
Venice . Italy
Diana Agrest, Anna Bokov, Caren Bingol
Jihoon Park, Mudong Jung
instructor
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Design schemes are never purely new. They derive from perceptions of others. Some of them become favored by individuals under governmental, environmental, or personal environments. Others may be replaced by alternatives which become preferable in that period of time. However, certain schemes can be reborn with a touch of others’ ideas which then leads to a new trend. This studio aims to revisit these schemes, starting off with Le Corbusier’s pinwheel module used for the Venice Hospital.
Phase 1 _ mylar hand drawing
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Plans and sections are cuts implementing spatial information. Before the time of computer-aided drafting, hand drafted drawings depended largely on line-weights and poche. Hierarchy builds up starting from hidden-lines, construction-lines, detail-lines, surface break, profile edge, and lastly section cut. This creates depth and compiles layers of information. Precision matters.
Phase 2 _ activity system
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Positional significance is what makes Venice Hospital unique in its means of access and egress. Situated above water, the hospital was designed in consideration of access for both islanders and inlanders. Inner Venice does not allow automobiles. Therefore, islanders’ main transportation is gondolas. In emergencies, ambulances docked on two sides of the building transports patients through the canal.
Trains and cars are accessible only up to the frontier, where the train station and parking lot stands. The hospital is positioned right next to the train station with the main road that splits toward the hospital. Thereby inlanders would have direct access to the hospital as they enter the city.
Le Corbusier named this building a ‘healing machine’. His insight of a hospital was to make the circulation as efficient as possible. Performing different activities, occupants are given with means of egress accordingly. Also to blend into the urban fabric, the hospital has a low profile in elevation, only consisting of three stories. A pinwheel form itself allows expansion while being connected in all directions, therefore, it can have sufficient density while keeping a low profile. Its center performs as a vertical shaft that can spread in four directions.
All the wards are positioned on the 3rd floor. To allow sunlight in every room, ‘Y’ shaped canopies are arrayed along the pinwheel module making an opening on the roof. Wards are attached on both sides for every canopy. They also have in-between doors that connect adjacent rooms allowing medical staff to penetrate all the way through, which makes their path much shorter than going in and out of every room.
The second floor is composed of spaces for staff. Surgery rooms, administration, rooms for nurses and doctors and others who operate the hospital. Between the second and third floor, a mezzanine is located. It is an adhesive space that connects the second and third floor with a ramp. Its layout follows the extension of the pinwheels.
The first floor, mostly piloti, has platforms for various means of transportation. Mainly categorized into foot, car, and boat, it embraces all the influx of population. Also, to intake sunlight, certain parts of the pinwheel were removed creating a courtyard.
Phase 3 _ models and design languages
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The design language of Venice hospital is exploitation of the pinwheel module. Pinwheel module proliferates laterally, accomplishing low-rise high-dense technicality and coordination with the urban fabric. This manipulation of modules has led to creating an architectural form, as we now call a ‘mat building’.
Playing along with Le Corbusiers, alternative proliferation of pinwheels concluded in two different objects. This study purely focuses on the geometric aspects of a pinwheel.
Both objects have a regulation of their own as they proliferate. One is focused on its lateral and the other on its vertical succession of a pinwheel. Lateral model focuses on linear sequence on a pinwheel. Consist of linear elements, its components are entangled with one another according to four types of criteria of how they intersect.
The vertical model creates more variety in geometric qualities given with solids in between. Its regulation of vertical accumulation succeeds in a rotational manner identical to the aspects of a pinwheel. Solids are then introduced on each level as a trace of every rotation.
