Espoo’s FitLife architecture is predicated on this holistic understanding of human health, longevity and happiness. It is designed to facilitate and encourage a plethora of organized and informal social activities through a variable and nuanced integration of circulation, collective and private spaces. The project begins by recognizing a number of factors that evidence has shown to affect health and wellbeing among both general and hospital populations . The project attempts to apply architectural and urban tools to proven hospital typologies and to create a field condition which caters to those clients with the longest hospital stay – those whom recovery is most likely to be affected by such measures. In collaboration with Matthew Murphy.
Six rehabilitation wards are taken as primary design drivers and are arranged in an almost-urban formation on a single plain. Within these longer-term wards a garden space is added to each unit. These courtyards offer personal green to the individual client (and can be made fully or semi-private with sliding translucent glass and lightweight curtains) and offer a bridge – in terms of activity, plant life and light – between the basic element of the hospital – the patient room – and it’s raison d’être – the community. This Village links directly to an efficient block that accommodates local and clinical program around a central core. Stacked departments contain elements that opportunistically address landscape and view with panoramic windows and balconies. Staff, visitors and clients share this volume, where typical hospital functions are wedded to activity and exercise spaces whose architectural character is distinctly anti-institutional. The dispensary, morgue and other suitable functions lie beneath the Village, lit from above. Their location providing efficient access or unique privacy, this ‘undercroft’, which also houses all major mechanical and storage spaces, makes an invisible yet essential contribution to the hospital.