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Purity and Danger: Transplant Palermo

Part 2 Project 2004
Chloe Street
 Royal College of Art | UK
Virtual surgeons and mythical mountain saints collide in a proposal for a transplant clinic in Palermo, where live video footage connects patients in Palermo with experts in Pittsburgh.
Consequent expansion of existing facilities is well underway, yet the hi-tech clinical environment advocated via this global link threatens to overwhelm a more social and spiritually oriented understanding of the healing body practiced locally in the mythical Catholic traditions associated with Saints and curative waters.
Transplant Palermo uses biologically inspired circulatory systems of symbolic and functional water to unite these two practices. Arranged as a veil of seams or veins cloaking the soft vegetation at the foot of Monte Pellegrino, water runs as mountain streams in a continuous and self perpetuating circuit of filtration around the site. Stone water channels define thresholds of infection control below and carve out spaces for personal sanctuary within, creating a healing and temporal environment of reflected light and rhythmic water flow. Environmental, medical and symbolic structures converge to generate an architecture of pattern that makes visible the integration of these three aspects of the design.



Through recent projects in ADS1 we have developed projects in Accra, Ghana and Chennai, India by searching for points of departure that could leap over the standard approaches to development yet retain cultural and historical identity.

This year we were in Sicily, once a central hub of the Mediterranean and Goethe's "key to Italy", now a Ryanair destination polished with the glamour of Hollywood crime. We wanted to explore new possibilities on a secluded edge of Palermo where Monte Pellegrino slides into the sea.

“Transplant Palermo” develops an existing scenario. In the foreground, images from a makeshift organ transplant clinic in the city are fed live to a hospital in Pittsburgh. In the background, in return for their expertise and money, Pittsburgh desires a neutral but accessible staging post near to Africa and Arabia.

To progress this curious opportunity, Chloe weaves other activities and meanings by overlaying religious, medical and servicing systems. Water fonts and reed beds combine in a semiotic and ecological water system that echoes the biological circulatory systems of the body. This new facility, part obligatory pilgrimage, part beautiful recycling system, appears to circumscribe Monte Pellegrino under the watchful eye of Santa Rosalia, patron saint of Palermo.

2004
research – WATER AS A AN AGENT OF HEALTH AND PURITY: the use of water in hospitals appears functional while the church font remains symbolic yet these two systems actually overlap within the body itself.
research – BIOLOGICAL, GEOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CIRCULATORY SYSTEMS: architecture as an integrated element within the temporal systems which control our physiology, environment and forms of communication.
research – PALERMO’S CATHOLIC SHRINES: the atmosphere of Palermo is permeated by the practice of Catholicism and ornate shrines to patron saints can be found embedded into the walls on every street.
research – ORGANIC VS MECHANICAL WATER CIRCULATION: the curative water collected from the dripping walls of Santa Rosalia’s grotto sits in stark contrast with the chlorinated water pumping through Palermo’s hospital wards.
research – GLOBAL VS LOCAL MEANING MAKING: Palermo’s rich cultural heritage and local traditions could offer globalised medical systems a more humanistic insight into health practices.
process – SKIRTING MONTE PELLEGRINO: photo montages describing the initial architectural concept for an iconic jewelled cloak of water and stone, skirting the soft vegetation at the base of Monte Pellegrino.
process – URBAN CONNECTIONS: a nerve like circuit of pedestrian, tram and cycle routes connect the tranquil clinic with city centre research institutions. Palermo begins to forge a new identity as the Mediterranean capital of health.
design – ROOFSCAPE, STRUCTURE, PATTERN, WATER FLOW: environmental, medical and symbolic structures converge to generate an architecture of pattern that makes visible the integration of these three aspects of the design.
design – AN INTEGRATED ENVIRONMENTAL STRATEGY FOR RECYCLING WATER: mountain streams run as a continuous circuit across the roofscape, falling with the gradient to the south and pumped up by hydraulic rams to the north, interspersed with terraced reedbeds
design- SECTION THROUGH SHOWER SANCTUARY, RECOVERY WARD AND TREATMENT ROOM: views are oriented east through a sloped insulated glazing system looking out across Palermo bay while adjacent walls protect patients from direct sunlight.
design – PLAN OF OPERATING THEATRE: domed theatres both symbolize the heavens and provide seamless hygienic surfaces. Circular layout and central skylight dramatise the wound locating it symbolically at the centre of the space.
design – PLAN OF INTENSIVE CARE WARD: the design is driven by the desire to protect patients from the disturbing and intimidating presence of the technological infrastructure surrounding them which is separated into a cave space behind the patient’s bed.
design – PLAN OF GENERAL RECOVERY WARD: layout is generated by the need for separation between zones; personal shower sanctuaries offer a space for seclusion without interruption, treatment rooms isolate negative experience of pain away from bed space.
design – PLAN OF OUTPATIENTS ACCOMMODATION / FAMILY HOUSE / SPA HOTEL: the axis of these rooms shifts to provide views of the city reflecting the process of re-integration of the patient into the public world while taking advantage of sunlight.
design – PERSPECTIVAL PANORAMA OF OPERATING SUITE, PATTERNED SPACE: a sense of drama and purpose is created through the use of framed views, changes in level and shifting light levels. Light passing through water above casts shifting reflections within.
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