Rationalist Route I - 12 Psychiatric Hospital

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Routes · Subcategory: Rationalism route · Year: 1929-1932 · Authors: Miguel Martín-Fernández de la Torre

The asylum is located on rural land, far from any urban environment, on the outskirts of the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and supported on the road that connects the suburban residential neighbourhood of Tafira with the Southern motorway. In its isolation, the architectural complex is arranged as a heterotopic city, according to a functional structure that includes urban and care categories (entrance, stay, room, service, maintenance, care, isolation...), and it is one of the models of rationalist architecture in the Canary Islands.

These activities take place in their own volumes, which are composed without losing their formal autonomy. Thus, after an entrance between two pavilions in which a semicylindrical body stands out, a series of functional volumes are arranged parallel and symmetrically on both sides of a circulation axis oriented NE-SW favouring the slight slope. The bodies, between two and four storeys, are arranged in double rows and at various distances from each other, leaving open intermediate courtyards.

The volumetric clarity is highlighted in the height arrangement, from the dark plinth to the roof canopies. On the lower floors, a sequence of larger continuous openings separated by pillars is developed, and on the upper floors, smaller openings unified by horizontal bands. All the rationalist mannerism appears here: cubes and mated semicylinders, chamfers, circular windows, gables with off-centre square openings, flat roofs, terraces and cantilevered stairs, light tubular railings, cylindrical supports, absence of linear continuity at orthogonal junctions and lack of ornamentation, comparable to contemporary European proposals.

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