For the Son Ferriol health center, Laboqueria Arquitectura and Munarq introduce natural light into the deepest interior spaces via courtyards. These courtyards aid in wayfinding and provide areas for pause, featuring deciduous trees that filter light according to the season—thereby integrating climate, the passage of time, and the landscape into the architecture.
The materials used are natural in origin, featuring a cross-laminated timber structure and cork thermal insulation, and are assembled using dry construction methods. This approach allows for future disassembly, reuse, or transformation, conceiving the building as a living, warm, adaptable, and responsible system designed to care for its occupants.
Son Ferriol health center by Laboqueria Arquitectura + Munarq. Photograph by Ricard López.
Project description by Laboqueria + Munarq
The project starts with a simple question: how can a building designed to care for people also care for its surroundings, its materials and its own future?
Beyond meeting the functional needs of a healthcare centre, the project seeks to create a calm, welcoming and human place. Natural light, timber, vegetation and a sequence of courtyards shape the everyday experience of the building, bringing nature closer to spaces for waiting, circulation and recovery.
The courtyards become the heart of the project. They bring daylight into the deepest interior spaces, help people orient themselves and offer moments of pause along the journey through the building.
This same intention to care extends to the way the building is constructed.
Deciduous trees filter sunlight according to the seasons, allowing climate, the passing of time and the landscape to become part of the architecture.
The structure made of cross-laminated timber (CLT), cork insulation, natural materials and dry construction systems reduce unnecessary layers and allow the building to be understood as a set of elements that can, in the future, be separated, reused or transformed.
Son Ferriol is therefore not only about how a healthcare centre works today, but also about the relationship it establishes between people, nature and resources over time.
A building conceived as a living system: warm, adaptable and responsible, designed to care for the people who inhabit it while leaving the smallest possible footprint.
