Saint Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee - USA

Abstract

The Saint Mary's Hospital, with a capacity for 268 beds, consists of nine floors above ground and one basement level totalling 30,000 m². The ground and second floors, in a rectangular shape, comprise a large base on which the seven storey tower, containing the pacient rooms, rests. The most outstanding feature from the outside is the contrast of shapes created from the straight line character of the first two levels and the rounded shapes of the tower, that seems to have been placed on the two lower floors as an afterthought. This contrast is not originated by a simple esthetical consideration but rather by a strict functional interpretation of the needs of the hospital. The two first levels of the building house interconnecting functions requiring horizontal traffic, while the tower, on the contrary, answers to a centralised concept. A centre core containing the common services and the vertical transfer systems is the axis around which four functional subgroups are arranged, containing 14 individual rooms each. This functional scheme provides the optimal traffic channels, allowing a fast and convenient attention of the patients through the concentric organisation of spaces and services.