Marmara University Başıbüyük Hospital, one of the biggest health facilities in Anatolian side of Istanbul, has been retrofitted with the seismic base isolation technique to serve even during an earthquake and is going to make history in the earthquake engineering field worldwide. The retrofitting works have been completed on January 15th, 2016.
The hospital, which is designed to respond to modern needs as well as retrofitting against earthquakes; the basement, the ground floor and the first normal floor were redesigned without being attached to old projects.
Serving 10.000 patients in a day, Marmara University Başıbüyük Hospital has a 113.000 m2 construction yard consists of 16 complexes and a two storey closed garage. The existing number of hospital beds (600) increased up to 720 with the ones in the departments. There are also 29 operation rooms, 15 x-ray rooms and 3 angiography rooms.
The hospital will have a major role during the possible Istanbul earthquake by means of seismic isolation technology. Within this method, the isolation are placed under the columns and the concrete partition in the appropriate floor to cut the direct interaction with the floor. Moving with the lateral pressure, the isolators make very soft but big swings and this absorbs the earthquake’s energy, thus the destructive affect doesn’t damage the elements of the upper load-bearing system.