San Raffaele Terrace – Milan

The rooftop green terrace is included within the new Surgical and Urgent Care Pole building at San Raffele Hospital, designed by MCA – Mario Cucinella Architects specializing in architectural projects that integrate environmental and energy strategies resulting from research on sustainability issues.

Design thinking stems from principles centered on the need to put humans at the center of the project, particularly the patient but also all hospital staff. The process of humanizing a place of care also passes through the use of natural elements such as light and greenery that interact with the materials proper to architectural design. The goal is to help and encourage care through the proposal of functional, aesthetic but also environmental and therefore social solutions. The greenery increases the well-being of the users who enjoy and participate in nature from the inpatient rooms but also from offices or visiting spaces. In this way, the hospital has become an architecture that wants to take care not only of its inhabitants, but of its ecosystem, not only of the individual, but of the planet as a whole.

A high green roofed plaza has been created that alternates between meadow and gravel areas designed to facilitate maintenance work and management costs but without neglecting the aesthetic aspect of the composition and the scenic effect at night thanks to the grazing use of lights placed on the profiles that define the different areas of the garden. Finally, the green roof contributes to increasing the Leed score – Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design – the U.S. system for classifying the energy efficiency and ecological footprint of buildings. In fact, the new Surgical and Urgent Care Hub is the first Leed Gold-certified hospital in Italy.