Anatol Pabst

With its completion in 1971 the General Hospital Altona in West-Hamburg was one of the first high-tech hospitals in Germany and housed 31 departments and more than 1.000 patient beds. Today however, the large building complex can no longer sufficiently fulfill the requirements of a contemporary hospital and the city of Hamburg is planning to replace it, raising the question: What should happen to the heritage protected existing building?

Even though the building sector plays a vital role in advancing the climate crisis by accounting for more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, not much is changing in the way we build and - maybe more importantly - treat the buildings that already exist. With this in mind I developed a concept for the repurposing of the General Hospital Altona.

The main challenge was characterized by a lack of connection of the existing building and the surrounding city as the hospital operated rather autonomously and had few points of contact with its context.
My design proposal seeks to establish new connections to the neighbourhood through various means. New openings in the buildings‘ facade open its courtyards to the public and enable a new circulation through the low-rise part of the complex. This part of the building is reimagined as a neighborhood hub with flexibly sized shops, office spaces, ateliers, and community spaces with a central axis featuring a theater hall and a multifunctional hall running through its center.

The vertical slab, which used to house patient rooms is converted to living space. It is divided into several neighbourhoods, each featuring different types of apartments to cater to diverse residents and create a heterogenous apartment building. Loggias to the south provide outdoor space to residents and present the repurposing of the hospital to the ciy.

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