natural light, where the different health areas and hospital services can be clearly located, in a phrase, it is a “hospital that is easy to understand”. What would you highlight about this hospital?Will it become a benchmark? In this project we have managed to create a hospital that is markedly horizontal, with plenty of natural light and landscaped interior courtyards, where it is easy to find one’s way around and with clear circulations and very accessible services. It consists of a base on the ground and ground floor where the outpatient units are located and three towers of greater height where the hospitalisation is located. At the top of one of the towers is the heliport, which communicates quickly with the emergency area, operating theatres and radiodiagnosis. The Puertollano Hospital is a Regional and University hospital and will serve Puertollano and all the nearby towns in the region. What do you value most in this type of infrastructure? Each project must be assessed as a whole, with the study and the solution given to the facilities being key and of vital importance. I believe that in this type of building, which is in operation 24 hours a day, it is essential to have a good facilities project that serves the operational needs of the hospital and that is energy efficient over time. What is the biggest architectural challenge in hospital infrastructure? Hospitals can be considered as buildings of intensive use, therefore, the circulations, the accesses, the stay of health personnel and patients must be very carefully studied, so that it is a polite, friendly and comfortable building so that the main objective, which is the care of people’s health, is as close and efficient as possible. On the other hand, from the point of view of energy consumption, these buildings are very demanding in terms of safety and comfort. The centralised technical management of these buildings has more and more control points and, given the current period of very high energy prices, it is important that the Juan JoséMonterrubio OrtizConstruction Project Manager of the Puertollano Hospital, Ciudad Real, Spain What is the key when designing a hospital?What steps have been taken in the Puertollano hospital? A hospital must be designed in such a way that it can accommodate both the patients and the healthcare staff working in it, and it is in this daily coexistence between the two that the design of functional spaces in a hospital is born. There is no hospital without a good facilities project, both in terms of design and operability, which is why the facilities in these buildings have become a vital part of them. The Puertollano Hospital has been built on the same plot of land next to the existing hospital, physically separated from each other, so that the healthcare activity practically does not interfere with the construction of the new hospital. Once the work on the new hospital has been completed and the transfer from the old hospital has been carried out, the latter will be dismantled until it is completely demolished and the entire urban development will be completed, including surface car parks and new roads. The key to the Puertollano Hospital is to design a new open health centre, with independent and well differentiated accesses, with plenty of design and construction of these buildings is oriented towards improving the environmental and energy sustainability of these buildings, looking for renewable sources. Are new technologies influencing hospital architecture? I think that sooner or later, new technologies will change the design of the interior spaces of hospitals, as communications will be different. I believe that artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, once the patient has been tested, will give healthcare staff more tools to diagnose possible illnesses and apply the necessary treatments. All this implies new designs of the spaces dedicated to MRI, CT, radiodiagnostic tests, laboratories, etc. New technologies change the way people communicate and will therefore change the spaces that accommodate them. On the other hand, over time in any medium/large hospital, if we add the control elements of the installed machinery plus all the equipment that will be included once it is finished, it will mean that there will be platforms that integrate all this and strong companies and skilled people to be able to manage it.