Health Street transforms a former technical service yard into ecological and therapeutic infrastructure at the core of one of Brazil’s most significant philanthropic healthcare institutions. Built upon the Oncology wing of Santa Casa de Misericórdia de Porto Alegre — an institution with over two centuries of continuous operation — the 1,862 m² intervention emerged from a precise structural decision: the demolition of the uppermost floor of an existing tower, whose footprint became the ground of the new landscape intervention, connecting five of the nine hospitals within the complex. The hospital ward below remained in uninterrupted operation throughout construction and continues to function directly beneath the new landscape.

What was once a restricted operational backside — inaccessible to patients, visitors, and staff — became a space of healing, contact with nature, and collective life. A technical void was converted into a living environment that qualifies the daily routines of the approximately 25,000 people who circulate through the institution each day: patients undergoing treatment, family members navigating uncertainty, and clinical staff between shifts. Supervised therapeutic walks, post-surgical rehabilitation exercises, and informal encounters now occur where access was once forbidden. Landscape shifts from supplementary background to active component of the care protocol.

The project operates from a precise disciplinary premise: in an environment governed by clinical control and technical efficiency, landscape functions as therapeutic infrastructure — not amenity. The vegetal layer introduced above active medical infrastructure generates a productive tension between fragility and vitality that is intrinsic to the therapeutic dimension of the space.

Vegetation is organized in dense, layered strata. *Heliconia*, *Philodendron*, and native *Arecaceae* form the expressive tropical ground, intensifying the perception of natural immersion and spatial protection. Adult fruit trees installed in large structural planters introduce verticality, human scale, and seasonal rhythm beneath the elevated canopy. Flowering cycles produce intense bursts of yellow throughout the year — a deliberate chromatic intervention within an environment historically dominated by clinical whites and greys — allowing the space to function as an evolving biological system rather than a static composition.

The formal language emerges from the tension between the historical orthogonality of the surrounding 19th- and early 20th-century buildings and the organic geometry of the canopy and pathways. Movement is choreographed through subtle deflections and shifting perspectives, fully integrating universal accessibility principles. The canopy functions as an environmental mediator: elevated to preserve natural ventilation while providing protection from rain and cold, its geometry is calibrated to direct rainwater toward a dedicated reuse reservoir that supplies the entire irrigation system — consolidating an environmental infrastructure directly coupled to the medical infrastructure below.

Execution presented significant logistical complexity: structural reinforcement over an active building, installation of a large-span canopy, and insertion of mature specimens — all within a sensitive clinical context without interrupting hospital operations. This technical precision reinforces the project’s infrastructural character and reflects the exigency of operating within a protected and historically significant institution.

Health Street articulates a contemporary model for healthcare environments: one in which circulation, occupation, and institutional identity are structured through operative landscape. More than a hospital garden, it represents a disciplinary position — that institutions of care can be reimagined as living systems in which landscape functions as structuring infrastructure, shaping meaning, environmental performance, and collective well-being.

Client: Santa Casa de Misericordia de Porto Alegre
Architects: Somos EXP, Seferin Saúde, schlaich bergermann partner, Simone Freitas Dall’Igna, Carlos Henrique Correa, Thayssa Christensen, Laís de Andrade, Gabriela Budel, Louise Soares, Gustavo Seferin, Marcelo Seferin

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