HEALTHY GREENS
Not only is the vision for the new Bethesda Medical Center a winner for its conceptual design, it’s also an exemplar of a strong sustainable ethos. The team at August Green approached the site — in Cap-haïtien, Haiti — as a series of systems: ecologies, buildings, hardscapes, stormwater landscapes, power grids, waste treatment and freshwater delivery. In so doing, they have imagined a truly self-sufficient campus, one that generates all its own energy, water and even food. The entire place runs on solar energy (aside from a backup emergency generator) and funnels its grey water into irrigation for its lush plant life, which is further supported by multiple stormwater-management bioswales integrated throughout the site.
Central to the design of these complex systems was the guarantee of human comfort. To keep patients and doctors safe from heatstroke and fatigue in the blistering heat of Haiti, the team needed to ensure that they could reliably cool the public and interior spaces throughout the campus without the use of air conditioning. Using computational fluid dynamics modelling, they learned how to harness wind flow through a series of courtyard buildings surrounded by high and low planting layers that provide further shade (while delivering sustenance in the form of plantains, avocados, almonds and more). To erect the buildings, the team opted for one-foot-thick earth blocks, which act as a thermal mass that cools the air, while open vented blocks allow fresh air to flow inward. Inside the efficient facilities, pitched ceilings reflect light and allow hot air to rise and be carried out through chimneys composed of prefabricated skylights and whirlybirds.
At its heart, Bethesda Medical Center represents a holistic approach to sustainability, where longterm generational use, healthfulness and economic prosperity for the people and the community have been considered in full. “If the circular economy (as it will be described in our next generation of building methodologies) necessitates consideration of context and the ‘contextually available’ as the origins of materialand systems-based thinking, the designers of the Bethesda Medical Center have written us an effective textbook.” — Drew Sinclair
Project: Bethesda Medical Center
Location: Cap-haïtien, Haiti
Firm: August Green, Phoenix, U.S.
Team: Kyle Mertensmeyer with Matthew Shields, Zoia Pushkova and Yingnan Ting (August Green); Ryan Eley (RWE Builds); Kos Komorowski, Ana Kuznietsova and Yurii Muzyka (Kaleidoskope)
Rendering: Kaleidoskope