Face lift - cosmetic surgery clinic in Spanish palace - Brief Article

Architectural Review, The, May, 2001 by Penny McGuire

A difficult plan, inherited from Baroque Rome, has been adapted to form intimate spaces for delicate medical transactions. Light, bath natural and artificial, is the key.

The cosmetic surgery clinic, by the youthful practice UdA, has been inserted into the ground floor of a wing of a seventeenth-century palace. Located between Piazza di Spagna and Piazza del Popolo, the palace is in the heart of baroque Rome. The architects point out with some relish the tension between exuberant context (the dominion of form'), and their approach to the scheme which was dedicated to cleansing historical form -- rather as the clinic presumably does to its patients.

Originally, the wing consisted of a series of large volumes running across it, leading one into the other and illuminated on one side by windows onto the street. In response to the brief, which asked for a logical progression of different treatment rooms, the practice established within the old divisions a kind of internal urban plan. A long corridor, like a street, runs down the inner side of the building with side aisles and sliding doors giving access to the treatment rooms on the street side, and ancillary services and archives on the other. The corridor runs from reception to medical supplies and records, and the operating theatre. In between, are pairs of treatment rooms running down the long axis of the building.

UdA's spare stripped down aesthetic reflects the centre's purpose and is articulated through materials and light. Strong southern light from peripheral windows is diffused through screens and translucent doors, reflected off gleaming white walls and stainless steel fittings. Backlit images of bamboo form full-height screens, indicate the exteriors of treatment rooms and cast cool greenish luminance along the length of the corridor.

Architect

UdA, Turin

Project architects

W. Camagna, M. Camoletto, A. Marcante, with Sonia Opiatti