Into the Garden. Hospice project by Polish team doubly awarded!

Dobrawa Bies

20 of October '21

Into the Garden project with two awards in Bee Breeders competition

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Architects Marcin Gierbienis and Damian Poklewski-Koziello of the Gierbienis + Poklewski studio, together with students of the Faculty of Architecture at the Cracow University of Technology - Justyna Kopacz and Aleksander Kwaśniak - won as many as two awards in the international competition "Hospice - Home for terminally ill" organized by the Bee Breeders platform. Their project "Into the Garden" received the first prize and an additional BB Green Award for the greenest building!

The goal of the "Hospice - Home forterminally ill" competition was to design a space where terminally ill people can seek respite, convalesce and receive support in any form in their fight against the disease. The competition's hospice would act as a center that patients can visit daily for advice and even companionship during treatment. The task gave participants a chance to experiment with architecture as a tool to help the sick and show how architecture can bring mental relief.

The winning project features an unusual roof and lots of greenery

Although this was a concpetition, the organizers asked to include space for several key functions - a common area with a library, a meeting room and chapel, a kitchen and dining room, as well as a private area with a room for medical staff and a psychological therapy room. The building was to accommodate 15 patients and five studios. No orchestrated location for the hospice was given, and participants were asked to choose a sample site of their own country.

two awards for polish team

The submitted works were evaluated by an international jury of health architecture specialists, including: Rubén García Rubio and Sonsoles Vela Navarro (studioVRA) Arturo Mc Clean (Miralles Tagliabue EMBT), Paul Monaghan (AHMM), Françoise N'Thépé (FRANÇOISE N'THÉPÉ ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN), Andrew Thurman (York St. John University) and Dr. Johan van der Zwart.

The work entitled Into the Garden by a team from Poland consisting of: Marcin Gierbienis, Damian Poklewski-Koziello, Justyna Kopacz and Aleksander Kwaśniak was recognized and received as many as two awards: first place and the BB Green Award.

The award-winning project creates a natural sanctuary designed so that the user is enveloped in magical greenery, covered by a levitating roof. The wooden structure wrapped in a translucent membrane lets in light from the outside, illuminating the interior while offering a therapeutic atmosphere, free from the outside sounds of the city. The concept resembles a giant hothouse with a beautiful garden and surrounding rooms [...]. The award-winning project is a fresh idea for integrating day care with the urban context, thanks to the use of abundant vegetation and a shelter-like roof, among other things. Into the Garden emphasizes the use of nature as an instrument to heal people and the city. The result is a fantastic space for year-round living," reads the jury's reasoning.

design idea

home garden

When we read the name of the competition task "Hospice - Home for terminally ill" we knew that we wanted an idea that referred to the words "home" and "garden". The building was to be a home - a place that brings to mind associations with safety, warmth and openness," the contest winners tell us.

The authors searched for the identity of the building both in the location - choosing a plot of land that is a vacant lot in a historic frontage, located in the very center of city life, the form - hiding the function under a gabled roof characteristic of single-family residential buildings, and in the organization of the internal space - treating the various functions as if they were rooms, giving them a homely atmosphere.

The structure is covered with a transparent membrane, and the roof floats over the garden

The architects' idea was complemented by the introduction of a garden inside, so that the building is not associated with a hospice and closed walls, but actually creates a unique and magical space. The roof, devoid of visible supports, floats above the interior landscape. The wooden structure is exposed, and its covering, in the form of a translucent membrane, allows light to explore the garden.

the healing power of nature

The winning concept refers to the premise of biophilia, or love of nature - a trend that has become increasingly popular in recent years.

This is due to the need to renew man's increasingly lost contact with nature. The need has become particularly apparent in the difficult time of pandemics in which societies, regardless of latitude, have found themselves. The language of flora and fauna is something primordial and universal, and modern research confirms that nature has a huge impact on the psychophysical condition of humans. Researchers note that human interaction with the world depends on its natural features: light, sounds, smell, vegetation, weather, but also on proportions, sequences, divisions or patterns. It is the observation of the so-called geometry of nature that positively influences human perception of the world. Particularly important is the introduction of greenery in cities and even in buildings - as in this case, where it gains, in addition to aesthetic value, also an important function, to guide the patient through the so-called phases of mourning, the architects explain.

Visually, the project resembles an orangery

biophilic design

The project visually resembles an orangery - introducing the biophilic design strategy, the designers divided it into direct and indirect experience groups. The direct includes qualities such as vegetation, animals, light, air, and water, creating a place that connotes an open space reminiscent of a wild clearing in the forest. Indirect ones are evident in the use of natural materials of wood or stone, the use of representations of nature through patterns and symbols. Also of great importance is the appeal to the senses through the use of textures, sound and even smell.

some of the space provides a resemblance

A separate group is the experience of space and place, embracing the idea of shelter, providing intimacy, security and complexity - designing based on richness of detail and variety. Transition zones proposed, promote orientation in the building, mobility and perception of space. The architects' pro-environmental approach is also evident in the proposal to use energy-saving solutions in the building and using renewable materials and a low carbon footprint.

Islands, or stages of coping

In the design, the architects decided to refer to the five stages of awareness of inc urable illness known in psychology - in this case, awareness of incurable illness. The idea was to create a space far from the associations with a typical hospice, and its organization was to refer to psychological knowledge. The authors creatively interpreted the stages of consciousness, turning them into islands scattered in the garden, while maintaining consistency, but offering different emotions in each space each time.

One of the competition guidelines was to include a small library

Although researchers do not fully agree on whether the stages of awareness of terminal illness can be proven to exist, we found them to be an adequate starting point for considering the needs of those affected by terminal illness. For many of us, crossing the threshold of a hospice is an act of courage or perhaps the opposite - the result of helplessness, the architects say.

Thespaces-islands in the garden were divided into: denial - which is the first stage when a person believes that the medical diagnosis is not true. With this in mind, the architects created an inset space outside the building, so that the patient has the opportunity to decide whether he or she is ready to go inside. The next stage is anger - the patient enters the building and there meets people who will listen to him and help him understand. Bargaining is the stage when a person lets go of the anger and with that comes the willingness to act, wanting to do everything to recover. The multifunctional spaces designed on the island respond to the need for action. The fourth stage is depression - in response to the need for seclusion , a space that brings relief appears. The final stage is acceptance, the moment of realization of the inevitability of death. A stable mental state makes it easier to socialize with others, which is why on this island the architects created the heart of the hospice - a kitchen with a dining space for communal meal preparation and conversation.

Read also about other competition projects by the Gierbienis + Poklewski studio: the YAC-awarded chapel in Rwanda and the Omula horse museum, which was shortlisted for the Bee Breeders competition.