Location: Gilly, Belgium
Date: 2022-
Programme: Medical Center
Client: Espace Temps
Status: Ongoing
Area: 800m²
Budget: 900 000€
Team: Traumnovelle (architects)
By considering health as a set of elements that go beyond the purely medical, Espace-Temps invites architecture to become a player in improving the living conditions that create health. The project to extend the medical centre bears witness to the success of this model and philosophy with the local population, and to the need for such spaces in neighbourhoods that are often deserted by these common spaces. Gilly is no exception, and is suffering from the disappearance of quality community spaces where people can meet, live together and form a community. Health then becomes one of the driving forces behind living together. In keeping with these ambitions to create a community, the medical centre extension project draws on the notion of domestic space - the home, the house, the home from home - to offer visitors a reassuring, comfortable and familiar setting.
The proposal is part of Espace-Temps' desire to create a place for the local community. A care home, so to speak. The existing spaces are intended to be warm, welcoming, bright, transparent when necessary, and enveloping, so that each occupant can find his or her place. This domestic aspect is the keystone of our proposal. Responding to the needs of a social and care programme through its organisation, the project plans to continue and reinforce the domestic character of Espace-Temps.
A neighbourhood medical centre, and one with social, community and civic ambitions like Espace-Temps, must clearly express its openness and welcome to the public. It has to be inviting, not intimidating, and it has to put visitors at ease so that they can express their needs, but also offer them hope and empower them to take action. In order to successfully fulfil this dual role - to offer a space that is both comfortable and exceptional - this project draws on the domestic character of the existing medical centre and its new extensions. The term "home" thus becomes the real driving force behind the project. By working on the scale and urban expression of the medical centre, on archetypal domestic features such as adjoining rooms, mouldings and thicknesses, and on the experience of comfort, we aim to develop a real collective home for the residents of the neighbourhood.
