Medicine ball by FOA

29 February 2008

The scheme, part of the huge Campus de la Justicia which also includes Zaha Hadid’s Civil Courts of Justice, has just started on site.

FOA’s spherical 14,000sq m building will provide space for forensic medicine in the region, and is the first element of the masterplan to go ahead.

Practice director Alejandro Zaera-Polo said: “Institute of Legal Medicine is a euphemism for a morgue.

The sphere is something that has a long history of association with death. We wanted to connect to this iconoclastic tradition.”

The masterplan stipulated that the building should have a circular layout, and FOA has taken this brief further, creating a structure with a circular atrium at the centre of a spherical volume.

“From the outside you see a spherical shape clad with a metallic material, and when you walk inside the atrium you see the same material internally,” Zaera-Polo added.

To be able to cope with a large-scale disaster, the morgue allows for 250 bodies and is designed to protect from infections. “It’s an intense environment, and one that deserves a certain amount of solemnity,” said Zaera-Polo

The building is due for completion in 2009.