COLL-BARREU ARQUITECTOS

Type: Health

  • Surgical Block

    Surgical Block

    The intervention understands the existing Hospital of Bidasoa as a constructed field rather than a finished object. Its accumulated layers, organized through a system of wings and courtyards, contain the capacity for transformation. The project operates by subtraction:a precise removal within the built mass creates the space for a new presence to emerge.

    Part of the original volume is carefully hollowed out. This void becomes preparation. Within it, a new structure is introduced, light, metallic, and autonomous, establishing a direct relationship with the ground and remaining independent from the pre-existing building. The encounter between both systems is defined by proximity and dialogue.

    This inserted body accommodates the surgical program as a compact and efficient core. The operating suites are arranged in a clear sequence, dimensioned for contemporary practices and open to evolving demands. Mechanical and electrical systems are integrated within its depth, forming a coherent infrastructural layer.

    Positioned at the geometric and functional center of the complex, the new volume organizes connections with the surrounding hospital fabric. Flows of patients, staff, and resources converge with clarity, and circulation becomes continuous and structured by proximity.

    Above, the metallic framework unfolds as an inhabited infrastructure. Its depth accommodates installations while modulating space and light. Openings carved into this structure introduce natural illumination into preparatory areas, bringing orientation and calm to the sequences of care.

    The surrounding courtyards gain renewed intensity. Preserved and amplified, they become active landscapes defined by soft surfaces and continuous paths, integrating exterior space into the daily experience of the hospital while extending its capacity through a precise and reversible new layer.

  • Diagnostic Center & Medical School

    Diagnostic Center & Medical School

    The Diagnostic Center and School of Medicine will be a leading center for research and clinical care. The Center will be one of the first in Europe to systematically incorporate robotic medical laboratories.

    This hospital facility has more than 400 specialized consultation rooms, robotic laboratories, a diagnostic center, a surgical suite, and specialized medical units.

    The facility also houses a School of Medicine with robotic classrooms, a medical library, and a Conference Center that can accommodate 800 people.

    The center features 1,200 naturally ventilated covered parking spaces and a station on the Bilbao metro network. Both facilities will improve connectivity with the rest of the city.

    Despite its large scale, the design establishes a network of pedestrian walkways and gathering areas, both indoors and outdoors, connected to the surrounding landscape and the new gardens.

    Its construction represents a challenge in sustainability and land restoration. The Center is being built on a degraded site that was used as a landfill for excavation spoil during the 1980s. The new facility will restore the area both environmentally and urbanistically.

  • Soto del Real Emergency Center

    Soto del Real Emergency Center

    The project is located on a well-connected site at the edge of Soto del Real, directly linked to the main urban axis while in close proximity to residential areas. This dual condition—operational efficiency and coexistence with domestic life—defines the proposal. The intervention prioritizes clear and independent flows: emergency vehicles connect directly to the main avenue, while pedestrian access is integrated into a continuous civic ground, minimizing interference with the surrounding streets.

    The building is conceived as a simple and legible system. A rectangular volume organizes the three emergency services within a unified structure, allowing immediate use and long-term adaptability. Rather than fixing a rigid layout, the project establishes a flexible framework based on structural regularity and modular organization, capable of accommodating change without altering its logic.

    A large horizontal plane defines the building’s presence. It operates as a protective device that shelters vehicles, users and access areas, while giving the building a clear civic identity. This element mediates between climate and activity, reinforcing the condition of the building as an open and accessible public infrastructure.

    Color is used as an operative system rather than a graphic layer. Each service is directly identified through a specific color, allowing immediate orientation without the need for signage or written information. This chromatic code organizes access, use and perception, ensuring clarity in situations where time and precision are critical.

    The project balances visibility and integration. While the building is clearly recognizable as a public facility, its controlled scale, vegetation buffers and compact form ensure a respectful coexistence with the surrounding residential fabric. The result is a building that operates simultaneously as infrastructure, workplace and civic reference.

  • Surgical Building

    Surgical Building

    The project establishes a strategic update of the sanitary-gerontological campus in Zumárraga, adapting the existing planning framework to new healthcare and social demands. It operates not as a single building intervention, but as a reorganization of an already consolidated system of hospital and care facilities.

    The proposal enables the expansion of the current program through the introduction of new volumes, including a surgical block and the extension of existing hospital wings. These additions are conceived as part of a coherent system, maintaining alignment with the existing structures while allowing for future growth and technological adaptation.

    A key aspect of the intervention lies in redefining internal connectivity. New links between buildings—both at ground level and above—ensure functional continuity across the complex, improving the efficiency of healthcare operations and patient flows.

    At the urban scale, the project reorganizes access, circulation, and parking. A new vehicular access is introduced to reduce pressure on existing routes, while pedestrian connections are enhanced to improve accessibility and clarity of movement throughout the site.

    The overall strategy defines a flexible and phased framework, capable of accommodating long-term transformations. By integrating architecture, infrastructure, and landscape, the project reinforces the campus as a coherent and evolving healthcare environment.

  • Multi-Use Garden

    Multi-Use Garden

    The project is defined by a linear system that mediates between landscape, program and movement. Rather than occupying the site as a compact object, it unfolds along it, establishing a continuous relation with the topography and existing conditions.

    A simple structural order organizes the intervention, allowing different uses to coexist within a unified framework. This system ensures clarity in both construction and use, while maintaining the capacity to adapt over time.

    Circulation is understood as a primary architectural element. Access, movement and occupation are integrated into a continuous sequence of spaces, where interior and exterior conditions are deliberately blurred.

    The project avoids singular gestures, relying instead on repetition, proportion and controlled variation. Through this approach, it achieves a precise balance between presence and integration, operating simultaneously as infrastructure, landscape and built form.

  • Health Department Headquarters

    Health Department Headquarters

    The new Basque Health Department headquarters is
    located at the last site that still remained unbuilt on the
    administrative and Business Center of Bilbao. Up to now,
    the institution was suffering the spread of its staff in several
    buildings, hardly recognizable by citizens, away from each
    other and uncomfortable for both users and technical
    services. The project at the same time involves both economic and property profits.

    The aim of the new building is bringing together
    staff in a recognizable place, in order to increase the
    efficiency of the service and identify easily the corporation.

    The site is located in the crossroad of two important streets
    of the Ensanche, designed in 1862. The restrictive city rules
    compel to repeat the shape of the neighboring walls,
    reducing penthouses according to a curved directive,
    chamfering the corner and building a tower on it.

    The folded façade generates multiple visual directions from
    inside to the streets bellow, and also from the highest floors
    to the landscape that surrounds the city, a highly effective
    mechanism for the incorporation of urban vitality inside the
    building.

    The double façade solves not only all the mentioned urban
    requirements but also those concerning energetic, fireresistant
    and acoustic insulation. This climatic improvement
    enables the elimination of the conventional air-conditioning
    installation as well as the false ceiling. Thus, the sound
    produced by the building is reduced, air recirculation in
    workplaces disappears, with a significant increase of health
    conditions, and the volume occupied per floor is also
    reduced, saving resources consumed by the construction.

    The façade responds to the investigation launched in the
    previous projects, which considers the wrapper as a
    system. The construction techniques, the operation of the
    building, the energy exchange, the city and also the very
    fact, the desire to be… take part in the system definition, but
    never the elevation or the composition. The system must
    provide a valid response to the different situations
    generated in the façade. Instead of merely set the building
    on the one hand and shaping the urban space on the other,
    the façade system should become a social vehicle.

    The building concentrates services and communications in a vertical spine attached to the longest party hedge and generates seven open floors assigned for offices. Above this, there are two floors for local representative and institutional use. The workspace benefits of the permeable, passable and livable volume of the building. The board hall takes up the double height of the tower. The auditorium, its foyer and its appendages are situated in the first basement. Further below there are two parking floors and one fourth level for archives. The car lifts allow access to all the basement levels.

    The project emphasizes the place to sit on the threshold, at the doorway of a house, looking down the road and the back into the home.