Project SheetA hospital of short distances

Klinikum Pforzheim: refurbishment and expansion

Project Panel

Clients

Rhön-Klinikum AG (2008-14)
HELIOS Kliniken GmbH (2015-17)
User

Klinikum Pforzheim GmbH
Effective Area

6.714 m²
Floor Area

9.823 m²
Floor Volume

37.278 m³
Completion

2017
Awards

AIT Healthcare Application Award 2014
Photos

Wolf-Dieter Gericke

Project PDF

Due to continuous expansion over a number of years, the existing layout was no longer suitable to support modern medical health care. A wish therefore came from the private management body to redevelop the hospital as a “hospital of short distances”.

The result was a square floor plan with attached hospital ward blocks. A continuous corridor holds a comb-like network of connections, accessing two day care clinics and four outpatient operating theatres. Located on the upper floors are Neonatology, eight operating theatres as well as the regular wards offering 500 beds.

All of this required a new building and annex, complete with a helicopter pad.

» The façades are characterized by a simple, horizontal structure following the lines of the landscape. Colours and materials create a bright, ever-changing atmosphere of yellows and blues. It abstracts the ranges of the Black Forest and Pforzheim’s history as a “golden city”, a city of gold processing. «

Nils Krause, Architect

The extension of the hospital is situated where the grounds extend towards the slope of the river Enz, allowing an extensive and effective hospital arrangement with short distances for patients, doctors and nurses. This allowed the main entrance to be moved to the centre of the busiest outpatient Functional Diagnostics department, the plot side with the potential for expansion.

A central axis runs through the heart of the complex estate, efficiently guiding through the existing heterogeneous ensemble with its rearranged functions, and providing easy orientation.

The historical patients’ garden is released from being an enclave at the back, and oriented towards the city and the river, thus contributing to the opening of the hospital towards the city’s urban core and bringing more life to the public spaces.
The ideas of “recovering health“ and of “orientation towards life“ are intensified. The aim is to establish a hospital which is sympathetic and sustainable as well as close to the people and the surrounding quarter.
Klinikum Pforzheim is a maximum care hospital, providing 500 beds and serving as the academic teaching hospital for Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. It is comprised of 12 clinics, two medical institutes as well as its own pharmacy. In order to reach an economically and medically sustainable basis for the former municipal hospital, which has been in private ownership since 2004, a considerable number of measures had to be taken.
In addition, the planners had to take into account that the overall project must be planned and carried out while maintaining full use of all the facilities.