'A. Meyer' Hospital
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| Owner | Meyer Hospital firm |
| Original purpose | Pavilions for tuberculosis patients |
| Framework | reinforced concrete and brick work |
| Plan | Triple Pavilions building – rectangular shape |
| Roof | Hip roof – wooden structure - tiles |
The 'before' refurbishment' situation
The villa sits inside a wide green area, behind hills. At the start of 1900, in Florence, a discussion about the necessity of new hospital building got started and a suitable area was located on the hills around Careggi.
In the 1910 the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova bought the Careggi estate to built a subsidiary hospital to the historical one. The 24 march 1912 works to built Villa Ognissanti started from the first pavilions to admit tuberculosis patients. The construction went on during ‘20ties,to finish in 1936.
The Villa Ognissanti complex consist of several buildings located inside the park, deserted before the start of works for the construction of the new Meyer Hospital. The three pavilions, Est, West, and central wing, are oriented on the Est-West axis and they consist in a three storey building with a basement floor that serve the two upper floors reachable by an external one flight staircase. Located in front of the main façade. The two rectangular wings are symmetrical to the central pavilion and the West wing was originally the same of the Est one, but after works to adapt hospital departments, the internal distribution have changed.
A central corridor, along the longitudinal axis of the two buildings shares rooms and services on the sides. At the end of the corridor, there are two large confinement rooms.
The park of the Villa has a depth vegetation, with 50 years old big trees. The main species are pine, citron and horse chestnut.
Objectives of the refurbishment
The overall objective of the Meyer project is to demonstrate how a holistic approach to the internal and exterior refurbishment of existing offices can provide energy efficient working environment with also the inclusion of some new extension (the green house used as general hall and the new staircases and elevator units).
The main design purposes are to ensure the best possible integration of the energy, ecology and sustainability aspects into the architectural retrofitting design of the proposed office building so as to form an architectural whole as well as eliminating conflicting strategies and facilitate proper operation.
Moreover the project aims to optimise the integration as well as the efficiency of the energy, sustainability and ecological systems and techniques in the proposed building in order to achieve the maximum possible energy conservation as well as the best possible indoor environmental quality together with the adoption of the more sustainable options.
Refurbishment strategy
REVIVAL project is related to the upgrading of Villa Ognissanti that is not more suitable to be used as an hospital and will be converted to reception, office for administrative and managerial functions.
To catch up the goals of the REVIVAL refurbishment project, measures related to materials, plants, energy and control strategies have been designed and they are going to be carried out during the building sites’s progress.
In particular, 4 main themes can be single out and strategies adopted are indicated for each ones:
- Insulation: replacement of the original roof structure, with a ventilated and insulate done, built using a natural thermo-insulating panel; substitution of damage windows frame to reduce air infiltration.
- Energy saving and recovery: installation of a HVAC plant equipped with a heat recovery system; building of a greenhouse in front of the central pavilion, that works as a buffer space in winter, to minimize heat losses, and also increases natural ventilation through a stack effect, reducing cooling demand and energy costs.
- Natural ventilation: study and simulation for natural cross and night ventilation through greenhouse’s openings and special grids installed below the existing windows of the main and back façades.
- Building management system: a detailed BEMS system has been studied working with Siemens and will be installed in order to measure, with more than 2000 lecture points, the indoor conditions.
Innovative technologies
- Intelligent windows equipped with special manually open grids, located in the lower side of the windows frame that assure an air flow and a cross ventilation between windows located on the main facades (front and back)
- Windows frame equipped with internal shading blinds operated by a magnetic device and activated by a lighting sensor, regarding to the lighting level variations inside the room.
Planned actions:
The greenhouse with the integrated PV modules
PVC curtain system sliding in aluminium guides installed on the windows’ frames