Groundbreaking ceremony for the new Faculty of Medicine and Nursing building, designed by KREAN

On 28 July, the ceremony to lay the first stone of the new building of the Faculty of Medicine and Nursing of the University of the Basque Country was held in Bilbao.

The event was attended by Iñigo Urkullu, President of the Basque Government, Eva Ferreira, Rector of the University of the Basque Country, Juan María Aburto, Mayor of Bilbao and Gorka Moreno, Vice-Rector of the Bizkaia Campus.

The new building, designed and supervised by KREAN, has a construction period of 36 months and will have a usable floor area of 32,000 m². It will house the degrees in Medicine, Physiotherapy and Nursing, as well as the teaching of seven official master's degrees in the area of Health Sciences. Located next to the Basurto hospital care centre, it will create a Health Pole, reinforced by a Technology Pole that will house the research areas and their laboratories.

The design of the general envelope is characterised by the search for an institutional image, representative of the UPV-EHU, through a timeless and figurative language; a compositional system based on the repetition of a span or module, which is capable of adapting to the great variety of interior spaces, and their possible future modifications.

The new Faculty and the Basurto Hospital are connected by means of a direct pedestrian connection on floor -1, which will connect with the Hospital grounds below the level of the ground floor.