SUSTAINABILITY SANTIAGO VIALE LESCANO – PROFESSOR, UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE CÓRDOBA, ARGENTINA
Traditional solution to energy consumption
Architect Santiago Viale Lescano explains how, when it comes to designing sustainable hospital buildings fit for the future, traditional techniques and materials can offer a rich architectural heritage from which we can learn and benefit.
Within the globalised, hyperconnected, and constantly evolving world in which we live, we have become accustomed to being immersed in an environment saturated with images, works, and projects that suggest infinite freedoms of design, insinuating that anything is accepted, and where it seems that we can practically do anything. However, the problems we face as a society demand from us a sobriety that allows us to responsibly address issues such as sustainability, indiscriminate energy consumption, carbon emissions and their impact on the atmosphere etc., taking into account that, for example, with respect to the latter, the field of architecture and construction contributes to the generation of up to almost 40 per cent of all carbon generated by humans.1 Given such a panorama and the
evidence that, as a discipline, we are not apart from this phenomenon, but, on the contrary, we are an active part of it, it is essential for us to reflect on how to address this problem and we must ask ourselves: What are we going to do with this reality? Fantasise that artificial intelligence will solve these problems? Avoid the issue? As architects, we are often tempted to
believe that our problem lies in thinking about how to generate energy, when in reality, the key lies in rethinking our design and construction processes to reduce energy consumption. Otherwise, we are susceptible to falling into practices such
The Hospital Municipal Principe de Asturias is located in a residential area.
as ‘greenwashing’, where the appearance of sustainability masks a reality with little commitment to the environment, materialised for example in someone who installs a series of solar energy generating devices in their building believing it to be ‘more ecological’ in this way, when the truth is that in the end, we do not know what the produced carbon footprint was by manufacturing the photovoltaic cells, their transport, etc. That is, we are attracted to preach a kind of misconception where we believe – and make people believe – that we are collaborating through what in reality is nothing more than an ‘ecological
scenography’, while the true search for solutions consists of the integration of sustainable design principles from the point of conception, putting common sense into value, and above all investigating the lessons that history and disciplinary culture have bequeathed to us as a rich heritage from which we can consult and learn.
The contribution of architectural culture Often, the answer to this problem will not be found in new and sophisticated techniques, materials, technologies or practices, but rather in the trusted
Santiago Viale Lescano
Santiago Viale Lescano graduated as an architect from the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in 1994. Specializing in healthcare architecture, he has been working in this area for over 25 years, completing many projects such as Hospital Municipal Príncipe de Asturias, Centro de Rehabilitación de OSSACRA, Terapia Intensiva del Hospital Privado de
Córdoba, and Instituto de Ciencias Biomédicas de Córdoba, within many others. He is a consultant for European and US companies that are developing projects and building hospitals in Córdoba at present. A university professor for the last 20 years, he currently heads two departments and subheads another in the Universidad Católica de Córdoba. Santiago has been published in many national and international specialized books, magazines, newspapers, and websites, and his work has been distinguished with several architecture prizes. In 2024 he was named president of the 34° Congreso Latinoamericano de Arquitectura e Ingeniería Hospitalaria, organized by the Asosiación Argentina de Arquitectura e
Ingeniería Hospitalaria (AADAIH), which took place for the first time in Córdoba and represented one of the most significant and rigorous events towards the matter, gathering professionals and workers from several institutions from all over Latin America.
IFHE DIGEST 2025 69
©Tomas Eciolaza
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