Auxilio Mutuo Medical Offices & Parking Building

San Juan

The Sociedad Española de Auxilio Mutuo y Beneficencia de Puerto Rico (The Spanish Mutual Aid and Beneficence Society of Puerto Rico, today the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital) was established in 1883 and since then it has expanded appreciably. As part of a recent strategic growth plan, the hospital’s administrators decided to enlarge its facilities to include medical offices, while preserving existing green areas on the hospital’s large property.

 

The office building was placed, in the form of an “L,” in front of the main green area, and a parking structure was built next to it. Between the two structures lies an open courtyard that connects the parking building with the hospital and the office facilities. The arcade that surrounds the courtyard unites the space and resolves the various necessary connections between the three buildings, as well as providing a cloister-like area protected from the sun and rain.

The Sociedad Española de Auxilio Mutuo y Beneficencia de Puerto Rico (The Spanish Mutual Aid and Beneficence Society of Puerto Rico, today the Auxilio Mutuo Hospital) was established in 1883 and since then it has expanded appreciably. As part of a recent strategic growth plan, the hospital’s administrators decided to enlarge its facilities to include medical offices, while preserving existing green areas on the hospital’s large property.

 

The office building was placed, in the form of an “L,” in front of the main green area, and a parking structure was built next to it. Between the two structures lies an open courtyard that connects the parking building with the hospital and the office facilities. The arcade that surrounds the courtyard unites the space and resolves the various necessary connections between the three buildings, as well as providing a cloister-like area protected from the sun and rain.

The eaves, brises-soleil, and changes in texture, color and depths make the office building seem less massive than it is. The scale of the parking structure is made to seem smaller by the articulation of its façade using three distinctive elements, on the vertical as well as the horizontal plane. The connecting bridge employs the idea initially used in the Carolina Judicial Center, of a filigree of metal to break up the massiveness of the structure. The red, metal-clad roof provides visual continuity with the clay-tiled roof of the original historic hospital building (Rafael del Valle Zeno, 1910).