Centro de aprendizaje creativo para personas con discapacidades. En Pisa, Italia

The fundamental design criteria for today’s healthcare facilities relates to flexibility, understood as: versatility, expandability, adaptability. This implies the ability to design a building which, while maintaining unchanged its symbolic semantic expression, is able to respond to the different functionality of a dynamic quantitative and qualitative market demands. Healthcare is going through a pivotal time which needs alternative strategies and innovative thinking to face the challenges of creating a better future on the world scene. When addressing the reorganization of the ‘network’, it is the social and mental care delivery system that is facing growing challenges presented by long-term conditions and multi-morbidity. A fundamental and rapid reorientation is needed, with greater emphasis on integrated care and care delivered in settings other than hospitals and home care facilities. Mental and physical disabilities services have gone through a radical transformation over the past decades. Deinstitutionalisation has seen the adoption of a different approach to care, as a pioneer in the development of community-based health services. The case study of the “Creative Learning Centre for people with disabilities” in Pisa is an example to start debating the most appropriate innovation to foster new models of care in order to set out a viable plan for the future.