“The project team used architectural ingenuity to solve a real health care crisis during the pandemic.” —Juror Mónica Ponce de León, AIA
Like many cities worldwide, Puebla, Mexico, saw its emergency rooms overwhelmed during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just a few years earlier, the city had lost its largest hospital to an earthquake—and had not yet replaced it. With many lives at stake, Puebla needed to act fast.
Health care projects can take years of planning and design before teams even embark on construction. The 17,000-square-foot, 40-bed Hospital COVID La Margarita was designed and built in 60 days through a public-private partnership between the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and Movil Technologies, with construction by Kainsa. Despite the urgency, the team had the prudence to incorporate sustainable design strategies and technologies, resulting in the project’s EDGE certification by the Green Business Certification Institute.
Precast concrete sandwich panels, with a high thermal mass and an R-15 insulation value, make up the hospital’s interior and exterior walls. A steel-clad sandwich panel roof finished with reflective paint further lightens the hospital’s heating and cooling loads. Other features include occupancy sensors paired with LED lighting and low-flow plumbing fixtures. Together, these efforts provide a projected savings of 66% in embodied energy, 28% in energy use, and 30% in water use, as compared with a baseline building.
The expected economic savings in building operations will help support staff training, recruitment, and the purchase of medicine and equipment. The project team also followed the World Health Organization’s protocols and recommendations for space planning, which resulted in strict controls on the flow of patients, medical practitioners, and administrative staff based on isolation and transfer techniques.
The hospital serves as a prototype that can be replicated in different scales and locations, says Kainsa partner Eduardo Kuri. “It is a versatile system and perfect to reduce the lag in health infrastructure in the country.” IMSS is planning to develop more EDGE-certified hospitals in Mexico.
Post-pandemic, the hospital will continue to serve the Puebla community, which remains vulnerable to earthquakes. The project team plans to add a surgery room, for which the existing architecture can readily be adapted.
Project Credits
Project: Hospital COVID La Margarita, Puebla, Mexico
Client/Owner: Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social
Architect: Kainsa, Puebla, Mexico . Antonio Kuri
Structural Engineer: Kainsa
Construction Manager: Guillermo Gomez, Ma; Fernanda Pérez y Carlos Castro
Materials and Sources
Adhesives/Coatings/Sealants: Glass Liner, Vinyl Siding, Corev, Comex
Appliances: Helvex; Jofel; Kimberly-Clark; Bobrick, Tecnolite, Schneider Electric
Building Management Systems/Services: Hikvision, Honeywell, Daikin, Firelite Alarms by Honeywell, Dell, Panduit, Samsung
Ceilings: Kingspan
Concrete: Cemex
Exterior Wall Systems: Vinyl Siding
Fabrics/Finishes: Glass Liner, Vinyl Siding, Corev, Comex
Flooring: Kainsa panel; Gerflor
Furniture: Herlis; Philips, Paramount bed, Agfa (medical equipment); Dell, HP (computer equipment)
Glass: Covico
HVAC: Daikin, PennBarry
Insulation: Kainsa panel
Lighting: Tecnolite, Schneider Electric
Masonry/Stone: Cemex
Metal: Ternium
Millwork: Formica
Paints/Finishes: Corev, Comex
Plumbing/Water System: Tuboplus, Rotoplas, Barmesa Pumps, Evans, Leflam, Durman
Roofing: Kainsa panel
Software: Panasonic, Siemon, Cisco, Samsung
Structural System: Kainsa panels
Wallcoverings: Glass Liner, Vinyl Siding, Corev, Comex
Walls: Kainsa panel
Wayfinding: Northeast
