AECC MEDICAL CENTER

New Headquarters for Spanish Association Against Cancer

Portada » Projects » AECC MEDICAL CENTER

Status: Design Phase.
Project Year: 2024.
Location: Several locations, Spain.
Area: Variable depending on location.
Design: OOIIO Architecture.
Interior Design: OOIIO Architecture.
Team: Joaquin Millán Villamuelas, Daniele Marino, Chien-Hsi Chuang, Lucas Goetzke, Ana Prso.
Facilities: OOIIO Architecture.
Client: Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC).

It is so good here!.

That simple phrase that comes out spontaneously when we’re truly comfortable somewhere. What we say to our partner while sitting relaxed on a terrace on a spring day. What we think while taking a walk along the beach when we feel the caress of that gentle breeze that smells of the sea.

It’s so good here! When all our senses perceive pleasant sensations, and we find ourselves enjoying total comfort. It may happen when we get home from work or while walking in the park, no matter where, but we’ve all said it without meaning to.

No one will associate those pleasant sensations with being hospitalized fighting cancer. Any of us would say they are antagonistic concepts, nothing could be further from the other.

Cancer patients, something already difficult and traumatic enough in itself, receive treatment in very unfriendly spaces where no one would want to spend some of the most critical moments of their lives.

And not just the patients, but also the entire medical team, caregivers, researchers, family members, cleaning staff—everyone who contributes daily with their work and effort in the fight against cancer does so in spaces where we would never say we actually want to spend much time.

Architecture undoubtedly serves to improve the quality of life of people, both healthy and sick. It affects mood, inspires, motivates, stimulates, welcomes, calms…

We are faced with the extraordinary opportunity to contribute ideas for a project as beautiful and attractive as the conception of the “House of Life,” seeking precisely to reverse this situation and fill with a sense of comfort, joy, and vitality, precisely what we psychologically associate with the complete opposite.

A challenge that will allow these centers to become meeting places where people want to go, because there they can learn, share time with the sick, heal, work, and debate. Thanks to their design, it is conceived to provoke the necessary calm to remain inside and want to interact with the people inside and with the space itself.

That is precisely what we propose: we want future users, while spending time caring for a sick person, to be able to say to them, without realizing it, in the middle of one of those quiet conversations with which we fill the silences… “It is so good here!”