The high-resolution hospital centre designed by EDDEA in the heart of the Sierra de Cazorla opens its doors

The new High-Resolution Hospital Centre (Centro Hospitalario de Alta Resolución, CHARE), designed by EDDEA in the heart of the Sierra de Cazorla (Jaén), has recently opened its doors. The building takes a distinctive approach: it is integrated into the landscape so as to bind the clinic to the natural setting in which it sits and make those surroundings a fundamental element in patients’ recovery.

The Cazorla CHARE is made up of several blocks arranged around irregular courtyards, all connected through a single entrance hall, the main access to the complex. The hall thus acts as a hinge between the different areas of the building, encouraging easier circulation between them.

The design is organised over three floors. The middle floor holds the main entrance and several rooms devoted to the most routine and urgent healthcare. The ground floor houses operating theatres and restricted-access diagnostic rooms, while the upper floor, the smallest, provides surgical and inpatient services.

White, characteristic of several villages in the area, is the colour chosen for the interiors, together with materials such as natural stone and glass, the latter intended to carry light through the spaces.

The grounds around the building have been landscaped to suit its needs: shrubs, conifers and other forest species surround the site, turning its setting into a pleasant, restorative space.

Chromatic integration

In seeking to tune the complex to the olive groves and the sierra, the design also adopts a palette of browns and materials such as ceramics and brick, a nod to the region’s pottery tradition, which clad the ventilated façade, along with volcanic gravel on the roofs.

The medical teams at the Cazorla CHARE are divided between the emergency department, surgery, outpatient clinics, diagnostic testing and the inpatient area. To meet these needs, the building has 13 specialist consultation modules and functional examination rooms on the middle floor, and 14 patient rooms on the upper floor.

The ground floor, meanwhile, accommodates the surgical block and the emergency area: two operating theatres, a recovery room, two cardiopulmonary resuscitation points, a triage room and three consultation modules.