Maison Mieux-Être

Project: Maison Mieux-Être
Architect: GOFFART POLOMÉ ARCHITECTES

Programme: The creation of the Maison-Mieux-Être continues the objective begun in the United Kingdom through the Maggie's Centers, of offering a place of welcome and exchange to people suffering from cancer or in remission outside the hospital setting. The Maison Mieux-Être offers a timeless space focused on people and nature. Taking up the codes of domestic architecture, this welcoming space is intended to form a haven of peace, a parenthesis, offering spaces for discussion, meetings, yoga, massage and beauty treatments.

About: Located at the heart of the park of the future Grand Hôpital de Charleroi, the new Maison Mieux-Être, a place for cancer patients to recharge their batteries and face up to their illness, is set on the Viviers slag heap, a witness to the rich mining past of the Carolo basin, which over the decades has seen the development of an equally special biodiversity. With the aim of minimizing the impact of the Maison on the park, the project is based on a stilted structure and is a landscape feature in its own right, blurring the boundary between architecture and gardens and creating places for contemplation, strolling and meditation. Taking advantage of its position overlooking the park, the Maison opens onto the great Carolo landscape to the south, shaped by its string of slag heaps stretching to the horizon, and onto a wet valley, characteristic of the site, to the north. Like a tree, the building is delicately rooted to the hillside, guiding visitors along raised pontoons to the heart of the site. These paths delimit as many different landscaped zones linked to the site's conditions, but also to the Maison's own uses. These covered walkways also act as an interface, protecting the Maison from various sources of interference in the vicinity (neighborhood, hospital, etc.).
The design of the Maison is intimately linked to the notion of time. Firstly, on the scale of the day, with the emphasis placed on its layout, proposing an evolving scheme in which technical functions are concentrated in a core at the heart of the building, while living, working and consulting rooms are arranged around the periphery, creating spaces that are sometimes private, sometimes open, linked to the foyer.
Secondly, on a seasonal scale, with the emphasis placed on landscaping offering a contemplative setting in every season. The important interaction between interior and exterior goes beyond a simple visual relationship. Indeed, the various façades of the Maison are separated from the park by roofs housing covered outdoor spaces whose thickness and use evolve according to orientation. At times simply providing protection from the sun or rain, these spaces become real living spaces, either as covered terraces or belvederes opening onto the landscape. These canopies create an extension of the Maison beyond its own boundaries, inviting visitors closer to nature.
Finally, the project is designed to absorb the different times of illness. Familiar, the project refers to the imaginary of the family cocoon, of the home, and emphasizes the progression in space and the cohabitation of functions that are sometimes intimate, sometimes collective and shared. The expression of materiality also reflects this shared domestic imaginary: on the one hand, brick expresses the solidity and permanence of the core. On the other, wood evokes the atmosphere of a gîte in the wilderness or a cabin in the forest.
Ultimately, the new Maison Mieux-être aims to provide an appropriable, welcoming and familiar space in close collaboration with the environment in which it is set, a domestic environment offering a soothing and privileged setting in which visitors can find the necessary support towards wellness.