In its penultimate projects – the offices at 180 Pallars Street, in Barcelona, ??and the CAP Cotet, in Premià de Dalt –, Baas Arquitectura, the team led by Jordi Badia, has opted for brick. In his most recent work – the CTA of Granollers –, made in collaboration with Casa SOLO, this commitment has been sophisticated to the point of approaching mannerism. This is something very evident in the main façade, of three heights, in which brick is used, in different arrangements and textures, for walls, lattices, pillars, etc., and composes a mosaic of construction resources.
This facility dedicated to oncological treatment and dialysis, attached to the General Hospital of Granollers, is a piece of the system of satellite centers of the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona, ??designed to provide proximity care to chronic patients, in this case from Granollers, Vallès Oriental. and Osona.
The desire to contribute, from the architecture, to making these treatments somewhat more bearable and to give the building a more institutional feel than services, led to a project that exudes friendliness. It does so starting with its way of placing itself on the plot – widening sidewalks, withdrawing to draw a small entrance square, lavishing sinuous shapes on the main façade – and continuing by resorting to the warmth provided by brick, which is used massively and imaginatively in the main façade, as has been noted, and also in the rear, horizontal in nature, caused by the difference in elevation with the front.
The floor plan of this center, inaugurated last November, is organized around two large light patios that provide natural lighting, thus maintaining the balance between transparency and privacy appropriate to this typology. Also in the pleasant double-height waiting rooms, located on the ground floor.
This most public and representative part of the new building exhibits its own character that is diluted in other interior rooms, in which healthcare needs impose their more predictable law. This duality may seem somewhat incoherent. But the architectural purpose of dignifying a hospital facility, filing its edges, is at least on the façade and in the waiting rooms fully achieved.
