A New Regional Hospital for Mechelen, Belgium

The AZ Sint-Maarten project combines 3 formerly separate hospital campuses, (Rooienberg Duffel, Leopoldstraat and Zwartzustersvest Mechelen) into one brand new building along the Mechelen ringway in Belgium. On Friday June 8th, 2018, Jan Ennekens (General Manager of AZ Sint-Maarten) cut the tape of AZ Sint Maarten by VK Architects & Engineers. This event took place more than a decade after the architectural firm won a 2007 architecture competition to design the regional hospital. This new hospital includes 654 inpatient beds (about 50% of which are single bedrooms), 96 outpatient beds and an ample consultation area. Approximately 1,700 people are employed by the hospital. 

Design Concept: An Object in Landscape

The designers began with anchoring the project in the green space surrounding the site which inspired strategies for building orientation, materials, volumetrics and accessibility. The result was optimal integration into the landscape, with a compact design that ensures a human-scale. In addition, a waving brise soleil solar protection adds a playful, and also delicate element: a second skin, protecting patients and personnel.

Design with Patients at the Heart

In close consultation with the hospital, much attention was paid to patient comfort in the form of privacy considerations, ergonomics, and environment and safety features.  By including a multitude of glass surfaces, patients have nearly continuous visual contact with the world outside. To achieve this, the architects specified windows and joinery complying with the highest performance and thermal insulation criteria as set out by Belgian standards. CS 77-HI windows from Reynaers Aluminium complied perfectly with this requirement, while also literally creating a window to nature and providing the building with plenty of natural light. In addition to providing each patient with a view towards the surrounding greenery, each patient has access to their own sanitary facilities and an internet-TV with various customizable functions.

Compact and delicate

In addition to creating a more human scale, the compact nature of the building design required less building envelope per square meter, which in turn reduced construction costs during the building phase, as well as energy loss savings over the longer term.

Moving from design to production of the brise soleil, the contractor and Reynaers Aluminium came up with a technical proposition by tailoring the existing BS 100 system to the design needs. This solution consists of no less than 63,000 meters of profiles. This delicate and functional ‘skin’ adapts to the façade orientation. For example, the lower position of the sun in the west and east requires smaller distances between the brise soleil slats than the higher position of the sun in the south. Much attention was also paid to the transition from public to semi-public and private spaces by playing with degrees of brightness. 

Collaboration between Architect and Manufacturer

As the construction of the hospital was submitted to public tendering, VK Architects & Engineers could not select any preferred manufacturer nor subcontractor beforehand. Following award of the contract, the contractor MBG and subcontractor Couwenberghs-Schellens proposed Reynaers Aluminium. After a tour of the Reynaers’ facilities, Reynaers Aluminium was brought on board the project team. 

Starting from the detailed design of the brise soleil by VK Architects & Engineers, a close collaboration between manufacturer, contractor and architect was established in order to come to a workable technical solution. ‘One of the key elements in this project was the wind tunnel test to verify the overall resistance to wind loads and acoustical impact. This test convinced everybody of the quality of the technical solution provided by Reynaers,’ says architect Erik Vereecken, Project Director Healthcare at VK Architects & Engineers. 

A BIM Concept

AZ Sint-Maarten is unique as it was an early adopted of BIM (Building Information Modelling) from 2010.  Working with a 3D model gave the opportunity to check different aspects of the design and walk through the project before it was built.  Long before construction began, airflows, mechanical and thermal simulations were undertaken with simulation data evaluated further to optimise the design and keep budget competitive.