The late Enric Miralles used to divide his architectural projects between earthworks (those that originate from moving the soil), such as Igualada Cemetery, and air works (those that start by manipulating the roofs), like his sports center in Huesca. Most of what he built in his hometown of Barcelona—Santa Caterina Market, for example, or the Gas Natural Tower, Olympic Archery Range, and Icaria Pergolas—are air works, though they are not necessarily airy or light. That is why, almost 20 years after his untimely death at 45, it feels right that a project coming out of his studio, Miralles Tagliabue EMBT—which is now led by his widow and business partner, Benedetta Tagliabue—arrives in his city as both an aerial and a topographical design. The new Kálida center at the Art Nouveau Hospital de Sant Pau aims to comfort cancer patients, the illness that killed Miralles in 2000.
A couple of years before Miralles’s death, while he and Tagliabue were working on the Scottish Parliament, Miralles met the Postmodern guru Charles Jencks. Jencks told him about his late wife, the landscape artist Maggie Keswick Jencks, who, up until her death from cancer, had been actively organizing the future Maggie’s Centres (a network of drop-in centers on hospital grounds across the UK, and in Hong Kong and Tokyo, supporting people affected by the disease). Kálida Sant Pau is the first of these facilities in Spain. It helps unify the eclectic examples of architecture on the site, creating a link, through its use of brick and decorative ceramic, with Lluís Domènech i Montaner’s Hospital de Sant Pau next door, now a Unesco World Heritage site, and the adjacent, clinical-looking hospital building that a team of architects led by Bonell & Gil-Rius finished in 2010.
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