Salud Digna, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing affordable health services across Mexico, is growing exponentially. The plan serves as a 25-year development framework for the organization’s headquarters and related functions in a new emerging district at the city’s edge.

The proposed master plan identifies a new institutional campus for the expanding organization in the northwestern city of Culiacán. The new campus will enable Salud Digna to continue to grow, thrive, and elevate their role as one of the nation’s leading healthcare institutions while also serving as a model for innovative workplace design and collaboration.

The master plan will serve as the organization’s unifying vision and development framework for the next 25 years

Mapping Growth with Data Visualization

Founded in 2003, Salud Digna’s rapid growth has been difficult to forecast. Sasaki worked closely with the ambitious organization to identify strategic initiatives and priorities that would influence future growth as well as their current space needs. After establishing a series of growth drivers and an understanding of the organization’s human-centered approach toward culture and operations, Sasaki developed a custom dashboard data visualization tool depicting how growth and new services could influence the physical development of the corporate campus. This custom dashboard tool dynamically adjusts based on user inputs and feeds into the campus space typologies, quantitatively visualizing the interrelationship between growth, workplace, and culture.

As assumptions change over the course of project implementation, the dashboard can be routinely applied to update space needs and make changes to the future build-out of the campus over time. In this way, Salud Digna can experiment with how different variables affect their larger vision for the organization’s future by linking strategic initiatives to space needs over time.

The custom dashboard tool allows Salud Digna staff to adjust several identified growth drivers and visualize the associated spatial and headcount impacts for the new campus in real time

Over 25 years, the corporate campus will expand into a combination of office, lab, university, and community amenity spaces. The Corporativos will anchor the campus at the main intersection and include office, reception, meeting, and multifunctional spaces. The CNR (Centro Nacional de Referencia) will contain the company’s specialized lab program with a dedicated loading dock, general laboratories, optics lab, staff rooms, and lockers. Salud Digna University will initially serve as a hands-on training space co-located within the Corporativos and CNR program areas.

As the University evolves as a unit, it will include a dedicated entry, flexible learning environments, and recreation spaces while maintaining access to both Corporativos and CNR spaces for demonstration and training. Additionally, the new campus will offer communal amenities for staff, visitors, students, and community members, like dining options, event spaces, an auditorium, cafes, an indoor wellness space, and a family center. In the initial phases of development, these amenities will serve the Salud Digna community with the intention of evolving into district amenities for the surrounding neighborhood as the campus grows. The connections between each of these program elements and their relationship to communal amenities is critical in fostering the innovative mission of the new campus.

At full buildout, the campus program will include a combination of office, lab, training, university, community amenity, and mixed-use/partnership space

Rendering of the main entrance to campus. A new building sits at a crossroads of mains treets

Salud Digna’s main entrance will anchor the campus along the primary corridors of Boulevard Las Flores and Avenida de la Marina.

rndering from the perspective of someone inside a building looking at people working together and looking out to people walking through adjacent building and the connecting pedestrian bridge

The corporate culture of Salud Digna is inherently social. The fabric of the new campus will celebrate this culture in its design.

Rendering of people walking through plaza in between proposed buildings

Salud Digna University will include a dedicated entry, flexible learning environments, and recreation spaces while maintaining access to both the corporate office and laboratory spaces for demonstration and training

Section illustration of proposed landscape

The new campus will establish an urban edge for Boulevard Las Flores, the district’s primary corridor

Sustainable Building and Landscape

Given the climate of Mexico’s Sinaloa region, sustainability and resiliency were at the forefront of the planning and design process. The master plan closely considered a range of building and open space strategies, like optimal building orientation for wind movement and ventilation, solar energy, stormwater management, landscape and structured shading, and a diverse and sustainable planting strategy.

Section illustration of proposed planting strategy

The overall planting strategy draws inspiration from Sinaloa’s diverse ecoregions and promotes the use of native and adapted species to create a rich, varied landscape throughout the site

The campus will serve as an ecosystem of interconnected landscape spaces that perform different functions mitigating stormwater runoff

Rendering of people walking through bustling plaza in between proposed buildings

The campus’ internal open spaces will allow for informal gathering or programmed events

Landscape typology: Green axes connect people at key moments across the site

Green chain: Green axes connect people at key moments across the site. Through lush plantings and pockets of outdoor seating that favor both large and intimate group settings, people can relax, meditate, and experience season changes as well as biodiversity.

Landscape Typology: The main streets are the North-South corridors that weave through the open space, connecting the level one buildings with the external landscape

Main street: The main streets are the North-South corridors that weave through the open space, connecting the level one buildings with the external landscape

Landscape Typology: The gathering nodes are major meeting spaces located at the intersection of the Green Chain and the Main Street corridors

Gathering node: The gathering nodes are major meeting spaces located at the intersection of the Green Chain and the Main Street corridors

Landscape typology: The Urban Green is the most urban edge, defined by a linear urban plaza with an alley of trees to welcome people into the site

Urban Green: The Urban Green is the most urban edge, defined by a linear urban plaza with an alley of trees to welcome people into the site

Landscape typology: The Recreational Green is an active park between the main site and northern parking garage that serves both employees and the local community from the surrounding areas

Recreational Green: The Recreational Green is an active park between the main site and northern parking garage that serves both employees and the local community from the surrounding areas

Landscape typology: The Green Buffer is a rich, biodiverse landscape with native planting that mitigates level differences across the site

Green Buffer: The Green Buffer is a rich, biodiverse landscape with native planting that mitigates level differences across the site

Green chain: Green axes connect people at key moments across the site. Through lush plantings and pockets of outdoor seating that favor both large and intimate group settings, people can relax, meditate, and experience season changes as well as biodiversity.

Main street: The main streets are the North-South corridors that weave through the open space, connecting the level one buildings with the external landscape

Gathering node: The gathering nodes are major meeting spaces located at the intersection of the Green Chain and the Main Street corridors

Urban Green: The Urban Green is the most urban edge, defined by a linear urban plaza with an alley of trees to welcome people into the site

Recreational Green: The Recreational Green is an active park between the main site and northern parking garage that serves both employees and the local community from the surrounding areas

Green Buffer: The Green Buffer is a rich, biodiverse landscape with native planting that mitigates level differences across the site

Planning a neighborhood, not just a campus

The new Salud Digna corporate campus will be a transformative project for both the company and the greater Culiacán community. In parallel with this master plan, Sasaki developed a plan for the larger area surrounding the campus known as Distrito Sur. This planning and visioning effort capitalizes on the potential of neighborhood anchors like Salud Digna and other nearby development to create a new mixed-use hub for the city. Unlike others in the metropolitan context, this mixed-use district can serve as a business center, a residential neighborhood, and a commercial destination. The development and implementation of Distrito Sur will provide Salud Digna with an ideal context and community setting for its future campus, where the institution and neighborhood can grow together.