Ecological Hospitals
Mick Bloemendal
Ecological Hospitals aims to formulate urban interventions strategies in brownfield areas that provide these areas with new ecological values over time. The amount of brownfield areas in Tbilisi sums up to over 1500 hectares of unused space mostly within the city borders. Due to the greenhouse effects, the ecological zones in the northern hemisphere are moving up north. Also being heat islands, the cities contribute to these effect and provide new grounds for these species and ecologies. The ecological hospitals aim at transforming the unused brownfield areas in Tbilisi by means of simple and repeatable interventions based on the dynamics of the emerging ecological conditions. Rather than addressing the urgencies of a global environmental crisis, the interventions aim to transform the top soil, let new species thrive, and eventually transform the area for alternative future scenarios in the city.
The land of the former military base serves as a ground for matrix of the different “design blocks,” which are categorized according to their impact over time and yet based on the simple soil operations. The blocks support the interventions of programs of a specific size that also match the underlying grid. The overall transformation process can be reproduced and applied in other areas, too.
