El Equipo Mazzanti’s add-on to the Fundación Santa Fe de Bogotá is the sole Colombian structure—and one of just two Latin American projects—to be selected for ArchDaily’s 2018 Building of the Year awards. Inaugurated in 2016, the twelve-story hospital extension received a whopping 100,000 votes from ArchDaily readers for its top spot in the Healthcare Architecture category.

The Mazzanti group was selected to carry out the hospital project after winning a design competition in 2012. One of the primary requirements of the competition was the incorporation of brick, which the group used in the façade by means of innovative patterns that provide natural light.

The solarium was conceived as a space for the patients to have contact with nature and access to sunlight, in turn reducing stress and feelings of confinement. Consistent with recent hospital statistics, the resulting light conditions, spatiality and incorporation of nature have coincided with a reduction in patients' recovery time, infections and medical complications.

According to the Mazzanti group, the expansion was particularly challenging because it needed to connect at an urban level while also merging with the existent part of the hospital and projecting for future space requirements.

The building’s strategic location between two of the city’s main arteries, 9th and 7th avenues, renders it an urban connector, complete with a sunny plaza featuring green spaces, a coffee shop and a multipurpose auditorium. elequipomazzanti.com