Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown by Charles Correa Associates

14 June 2011

This medical research centre in Lisbon by Indian architects Charles Correa Associates has a curved stone form with circular cut-aways.

The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown comprises two buildings, the first containing research laboratories and treatment rooms, and the second housing an auditorium and exhibition area.

A central pathway crosses the site between the buildings, leading towards two monolithic stone sculptures and an outdoor amphitheatre.

Above the pathway, a glass tubular bridge connects the two buildings together.

Photography is by José Campos.

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Here are some more details from Charles Correa:

The Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown

What makes me most proud about this project is that it is NOT a Museum of Modern Art.

On the contrary, it uses the highest levels of contemporary science and medicine to help people grappling with real problems; cancer, brain damage, going blind.

And to house these cutting-edge activities, we tried to create a piece of architecture. Architecture as Sculpture. Architecture as Beauty. Beauty as therapy.

And we have also attempted to use NATURE as therapy. The WATER around us. The SKY above. The healing presence of RAIN FORESTS. All these are therapies for the patients.

Of course we have a very special site. One of astonishing Beauty – and great historic Memory.

Norbert Schulz has written eloquently about what he calls the GENUS LOCI, the essential meaning of a site – and Architecture’s unique responsibility to express, to release, that meaning, A musician can play the same Chopin concert one evening in Tokyo and the next in Brazil and the third in Paris – with every note exactly the same.

But not the Architect. For a building is rooted in the soil on which it stands, In the climate, in the technology, in the culture – and the aspirations! - of the society that uses it. This is why the same building cannot be repeated anywhere and everywhere in the world.

And of course what makes this site very special is that it is the place from which 500 years ago Vasco da Gama and the other great navigators went forth on their voyages of Discovery - a perfect metaphor for the discoveries of contemporary science today.

This is why more than 50% of the site has been given back to the city of Lisbon for its citizens to celebrate that history – without in anyway compromising the privacy of the medical activities, and vice versa. The site plan is a yang-yang pattern of interlocking spaces.

Lastly, I am proud that this project tries to express the essential nature, the Genus Loci, of this site without resorting to erratz versions of traditional architecture.

No, we have used throughout a Contemporary voice to express not only the truth about this site - but also to celebrate a very crucial moment (arguably the DEFINING moment) in the history of this nation.

Project: Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown
Location: Portugal, Lisbon
Client: The Champalimaud Foundation
Purpose: Translational Centre for Brain, Eye-sight and Cancer research

Design Architect: Charles Correa Associates
Design Team: Charles Correa, Sachin Agshikar, Manas Vanwari, Dhaval Malesha
Laboratory and Clinical design: RMJM
Architect of Record: Glintt