The development model of health industry integrating tourism is becoming a new spotlight in the market. In the trend of international development of "medical and healthcare tourism", it is urgent to develop the health tourism market with Chinese characteristics. In 2017, 13 Demonstration area of health and wellness tourism were built nationwide under the co-leading of the National Health Commission and other units. The city of Sanya in Hainan, where our project is located, is one of the first selected destinations.

 

△ Location Map

The Demonstration center is located in Haitang Bay, Sanya, which is bounded by mountains such as Qiongnanling, surrounded by sand-beach and coconut forest, with mountains and sea scenery spreading out in a wide landscape. Ranked as one of the five famous bays in Sanya, Haitang Bay is located in the eastern border of the South China Sea away from the Sanya city, leaving a rare tranquility beyond the hustle and bustle. Haitang Bay enjoys unique advantages in tourism and residence, making it a gathering place of international five-star coastal hotel and resort community. Within the planned "State-Level Medical and Fitness Recuperation Base", the Demonstration Center integrates and balances various elements such as "Healthcare, Recuperation, Tourism, Residence and Recreation" to explore the boundary of the architectural type between the natural landscape pattern of Haitang Bay.

 

△ Surrounding Environment

 

The exploration of typologies in times of transition often involves a great deal of uncertainty. Before we got involved, there were several rounds of "demand tug of war" between the Planning Bureau and the developers: From the perspective of comprehensive urban development, the planning bureau wanted more than just row-like residential products; from the perspective of economic efficiency developers did not want a centralized layout with a single medical facility. The seemingly unclear gap between the balance of long-term upper level planning and immediate economic benefits gave us the opportunity to turn the conflict into a typological breakthrough.

After sorting out the health centers and their comprehensive configurations in Dubai, Germany, Switzerland and other health centers for world visitors, we tried to adjust the starting point of the design to the upper level of positioning and positioned the Demonstration center as a "medical-hotel-based composite scene destination": it blurs the boundary between hospital and hotel and accommodates multiple scene modes of recuperative vacation, so as to explore the possibility of typological innovation and build a health ecosystem.

△ Natural Courtyard

 

Looking at the world map of health service destinations, we have integrated the advantages of mature types, and to build a medical and healthcare Demonstration center with the characteristics of Hainan, China, we started with the exploration of planning layout, functional configuration and façade appearance, and concretization the above positioning as a "landscape courtyard under tropical climate conditions".

Planning Layout: Intensive and Efficient Natural Courtyard

The accessibility efficiency of medical diagnosis and treatment and recuperative vacation scenes is bipolar: Medical treatment usually emphasizes efficiency and intensity, while recuperative vacation requires freedom and idleness. The Demonstration Center should dialectically unify the contradiction of "efficiency and freedom". At the same time, within the density limit of 35% and the height limit of 40 meters of the site, the total site area of the project is 92,600 square meters, and the total floor area is 136,000 square meters. How to complete the intensive design of the large volume building within the limited index (better lower than higher) has become a problem to be solved in the planning and layout.

△ Intensive and Efficient, Courtyard Layout, Mountain and Sea scenery

 

The design maximizes the use of building density, reduces the number of floors, breaks up the whole into pieces, and strengthens the enclosure, so that the Demonstration center forms a group courtyard layout, and the leisure and near-human scale landscape openings can be placed, while the public and private spatial interfaces are clearly defined: the public functional courtyard is placed on the east side of the site, facing the urban arterial road; the recuperative vacation volume is placed on the west side of the site, which is connected with the interface of the residential community with small spatial scale and high private sense requirements. Therefore, the spatial layout is clearly divided, coordinated with the stretch of the mountain and sea landscape, and integrated with the local dwellings at the urban scale.

△ Formation Process

 

The separate courtyards linked by verandas. A sunken recuperation landscape garden is set up in the courtyard. With green plants and blue sky and visitors shuttling in-between, it rests your body and mind when you take a rest in the verandah, or stroll under it and is natural to push the window.

 

 

Scene Composite: composite scene destination for all hours, composite functions for flexible changes

The uncertainty caused by "demand tug of war" is the most prominent in the function setting. The spatial arrangement and zone configuration of the Demonstration Center will change dynamically at any time. Secondly, in terms of the use of functional space, there is a contradiction between time-sharing and full-time use of the medical treatment and the recuperative vacation. However, the breakthrough is still in the refinement of hospital functions, namely the main medical functions such as treatment and medical testing are time-divided, public and standardized, but the inpatient ward and medical staff life services are full-time, private and personalized. The difference between the two becomes the key point to solve the contradiction, and the Demonstration center can be transformed into a composite scene destination for all hours.

 

   Modular Design

The modular design of the space seeks "flexible" changes in local functions, realizing the potential for expansion, renovation and reconfiguration of the Demonstration Center, while not affecting the overall operation during the change process. The whole Demonstration Center is made up of modules of 8.4 x 8.4 meters. This module is suitable for 6 outpatient departments organized by a 1.6-meter-wide corridor, or 2 recuperative vacation wards organized by a 2.4-meter-wide corridor, or 6 underground parking spaces and other functional Spaces, so as to improve the variability of medical outpatient and the recuperative vacation space.

△ Visual Facade Rendering of Modular Design

   Integrated Medical and Recuperative Vacation

The public medical courtyard in the east is parallel to the main road of the city. The Comprehensive Medical Department is located in the middle of the courtyard, and the Special Outpatient Department is separated on both sides. Visitors can enter from the central main entrance and reach each outpatient department through the semi-outdoor corridor. In terms of the design of the recuperative vacation ward on the west side, the corridor is turned from multiple angles on the basis of the configuration of basic nursing and rehabilitation functions, so as to enclose the garden landscape and reduce the sense of closure brought by the long corridor. Multiple landscape balconies are placed in the middle and end of the corridor to enhance the visibility and create the space quality of a resort hotel. In terms of space configuration, public space is set up for recuperative sports center, all-age activity hall, tropical book bar, etc., so as to realize the all hours vacation like community experience.

△ Inside the Public Space Volume

 

△ Functional Zone

   Convenient and Accessible

After the zoning layout is clear, efficient and free traffic systems is established. According to the principle of separating people and vehicles, doctors and patients, cleaning and pollution, outpatient and inpatient, the auxiliary road for vehicles is set in the outer ring, and the entrances and exits of various functions are set reasonably. Between the separate courtyard, the corridors inside the building connect the semi-outdoor space and the courtyard veranda to form a convenient pedestrian path, while the green landscape transforms the pedestrian path into a relaxed and pleasant walking system.

△ Exploded view of functional area and flow analysis

 

 

Facade Style: Translating traditional architectural language, Responding to the regional climate of the island

The facade shaping is based on two local constraints: the strict style control conditions of the region and the hot and rainy tropical monsoon climate. From east to west and from south to north, China's cities are increasingly similar, even though their cultures and customs are different. "Diverse Cities, Same Appearance" is not only appear the same form of physical space, but also illustrates the poverty of urban culture. In this context, how to translate the regional language, coordinate the architectural scale, color and materials, so as to create a architectural style in line with the historical context and spatial order has become the exploration topic of facade design.

   Translation of Traditional Red Tiled Roof

The local architectural style mostly adopts wooden structure and red tile pitched roof as the main form language, which is also the style control requirement of local planning department. In terms of the shape of the fifth facade, we connected the independent and dispersed compounds through continuous roofs, and the Demonstration center became a unified entity with clear spatial layout in the vague spatial texture of the surrounding organization. By adjusting the connection direction of the middle ridge and vertical ridge of the traditional slope roof, the balanced and symmetrical state of the traditional slope roof is broken and it is translated into a more vivid and free modern form.

From the perspective of the horizon, the roof adopts the image strategy of "folding the top as a mountain", according to the primary and secondary functional relationship and height of the  building, the continuous slope roof gradually rises and falls, forming a rich and varied skyline contour, which refers to the "mountain" in the background of mountains and seas.

   Shaping Gray Space and Layers

In response to the local tropical climate conditions, the cantilevered eaves meet the basic shading needs, while creating a rich sense of layers in the contrast between shadow and sunlight. The setting of the gray space under the deep cantilevered eaves provides a comfortable and pleasant activity space that can cope with the hot and rainy climate, creating a tropical vacation atmosphere.

△ the deep gray space under the deep cantilevered eaves

 

    Derivation of Facade Motif

The above facade motif adapt to different architectural functions and scales, resulting in a variety of types of changes, so that the Demonstration center can form a cluster of buildings with the characteristics of settlements. Under the bright sunlight of Haitang Bay, the horizontal and vertical facade elements construct clear facade language details, presenting the natural beauty of large volume building with lively rhythm and clear order.

△ The Facade Motif Derives A Variety of Typologies

 

    In-Site Construction under Controlled Conditions

 ◆  Material selection and construction: the intact reproduction within cost control

The client has strict cost control for the construction of the Demonstration center, but the client's well-made image requirements have not weakened. In-site construction needs to consider how to skillfully reproduce the desired image within a limited cost.

 

The whole facade adopts the three-stage composition of Chinese architecture: the upper eaves, the middle wall body and the bottom base. For the eaves of nearly 5 meters in the upper part and the wall body composed of diagonal braces, window members and frame structure in the middle part, if the traditional wood material is used completely, it will encounter many restrictions such as high cost, strict fire protection regulations, moisture-proof and anticorrosion. How to reproduce the composition mode of wood structure and achieve modern translation within limited cost is the consideration factor of building skin layers shaping.

△ Facade Cladding

 

 

Through the model, we studied the scale proportion and lap mode of timber structure purlins, diagonal braces, window members, and translated into the façade cladding design. And the cost control is mainly reflected in the material of the skin layers: wooden diagonal braces and eaves purlins are steel structure covered with wood-like paint, eave tie-beam, column and other frame structural members adopt decorative masonry and glass window frame and grid window adopt curtain wall aluminum square tube, all covered with wood-like coating.

△ Exquisite Wooden Structure Model

 

 

In order to ensure the construction progress, the diagonal bracing steel structure, decorative masonry and prefabricated curtain wall aluminum square tubes were constructed by the three units respectively. However, due to the differences in manufacturing procedures and materials, the wood color and texture density of the coating were slightly different. In order to ensure the overall visual effect, after several times of color sample comparison, the color and texture of prefabricated aluminum square tubes and decorative masonry are darker and finer than those of diagonal braces, so that the diagonal braces with lower saturation and more stretchy texture can stand out from the background, thus constructing a more three-dimensional gray space color layers.

 

 

Under budget control, stone or all cast-in-place concrete is abandoned for the bottom pedestal. In addition to the concrete main frame, the modelling of base window openings are framed with a lower-cost lightweight steel keel, covered with GRC cement fiber-board as the panels and painted with a light-colored concrete-like coating consistent with the walls. Different from the original color of cast-in-place concrete, the base has higher white purity, presenting a sharper contrast under the bright sunshine of Sanya.

In the selection of red tiles, we replaced traditional terracotta tiles with modern precast concrete tiles, and covered the roof with three shades of red tiles in an area ratio of 6:3:1, so that the roof presented richer color levels and more vivid texture from a distance. In the construction, the transition is along the drainage ditch, the main concrete structure is covered with horizontal mortar tiles, and the outgoing eaves steel structure is covered with dry hanging tiles.

 

 

 

 ◆  Unfulfilled Regrets Beyond All Consideration

Appearance image is a mass communication symbol to trigger the audience's senses in the first sight. In order to make it durable and sustainable in a longer term, in addition to the consideration of the adoption of materials, the design of the components at the subtle level will also be a key factor. For example, the lamps suspended on the base are originally designed as wooden lap joints structure, which are in harmony with the wooden-like structure facade. Secondly, The large eaves of the main public entrance of the medical building conceal the drainage copper pipes inside the eaves for a cleaner image. Besides the main load-bearing structure, there are wooden decorative structure hanging at the bottom of the big eave, which gives it a stronger sense of spatial ceremony. Due to the cost considerations of the construction party, although we have not fully presented the above detailed picture in practice, we still present the design thinking in the project drawings and models with comprehensive principles.

 

△  The large eaves of the main public entrance of the medical building conceal the drainage copper pipes inside the eaves for a cleaner image

 

 

△ Facade Cladding of the Main Entrance

 

△ The Construction Site

 

The single type of real estate development mode is gradually declining after many years of rapid urbanization. In the regional comprehensive development mode guided by health industry, it is the blue ocean of the market in the transition period of green economy and population age structure because it pays attention to and integrates the environment, project, service and housing system and caters to the needs of people for recuperation, health, elderly care and vacation.

 

At the level of medical and healthcare tourism, one of the conventional models at this stage is to bring in a professional supporting operator and sell community products as a financial balance and supplement. In this process, effective communication which between the upper and lower levels of the industrial chain at the planning level, standardized implementation, space quality and image building at the design level will build long-term core value for the brand, and also establish a smooth path for the later service and operation intervention.

 

Faced with several rounds of tug of war, we solved the problem quickly within one and a half months through comprehensive consideration of planning layout, functional configuration and facade style. line+ attempts to realize the superposition of multiple scenes, dynamic replacement of functions, and a sense of leisure in living space in the mode of "landscape courtyard under tropical climate conditions", thus innovating the type of architecture under the cost limitation, translating the formal style under the control regulation, and extending the connotation of contemporary healthy human living elements.

 

△ Site plan

 

 

△ 1F Plan

 

 

△ 2F Plan

 

 

△ 3F Plan

 

 

△ 4F Plan

 

 

△ East Elevation

 

 

△ South Elevation

 

△ Recuperative Vacation Ward Building Section

 

 

△  Medical Building Atrium Section