The construction of the university hospital, along with the outpatient clinic and the theoretical departments of the Faculty of Medicine at Pavol Jozef Šafárik University, was the largest postwar investment in the healthcare sector in Košice. Upon completion, the new hospital was to provide a capacity of up to 1,530 beds, thereby ensuring specialized, therapeutic, and preventive services for the entire population of eastern Slovakia, including part of the Central Slovakia Region. The urban design of the complex, situated west of the city’s historic center, connects to the Košice-Nové Mesto housing estate and has good access to the north-south transportation artery that runs directly through the hospital grounds.
The architectural and spatial concept of the complex is based on a balanced composition of three main structures of varying heights and volumes, depending on the complex’s basic functional layout. The compositional focal point of the complex is a twenty-story inpatient building with an H-shaped floor plan. Opposite it, in the entrance area of the complex, stands a simple, elongated, eight-story outpatient clinic building. In keeping with the contemporary paradigm in hospital design, these are connected by a horizontal base housing shared operating rooms and laboratory facilities. In the northern part of the complex, perpendicular to the hospital and polyclinic buildings, the complex is complemented by the buildings housing the theoretical departments of the Faculty of Medicine. On the eastern side of the horizontal connecting base, in turn, lies the expansive atrium-style building of the children’s polyclinic.
From a structural standpoint, the hospital is constructed as a monolithic reinforced concrete skeleton with a suspended glass-ceramic curtain wall. It is a project of unprecedented scale, as well as technical and operational complexity—at the time of its completion, the hospital was the largest structure of its kind in all of Czechoslovakia. To this day, it remains a prominent urban landmark in Košice.
author of the description: Laura Krišteková
Bibliography:
ČERNÝ, Oldrich. Fakultná nemocnica v Košiciach. Projekt 8, 1966, č. 10, s. 216-218.
MALINOVSKÝ, Viktor a kol.: Dvadsať rokov investičnej výstavby vo východoslovenskom kraji. Košice, Východoslovenské vydavateľstvo 1967. s. 393.
ČERMÁK, František - FOŘTL, Karel. Občanské stavby. Stavby zdravotnické. Praha: ČVUT Praha 1981.
STRNADEL, Zdeněk. Občanské stavby: Československé a evropské nemocnice z druhé poloviny XX. století. Brno: Vysoké učení technické 1981, s. 152-156.
LUKÁČOVÁ, Elena: Premeny súčasnej architektúry Slovenska. Bratislava: Alfa, 1990, s. 137-138..
