Heal Thyself: new healthcare architecture

Hospital design today – even within the public sector – reflects a shift away from prioritising the staff's convenience to focusing on patients’ wellbeing. David Watts, managing director of CCD Design & Ergonomics, a human behaviour and design agency, points to evidence of this in the UK’s NHS, which aims is to drive up levels of customer satisfaction: “To achieve this, hospitals are looking to other sectors, such as hotels.” He cites the importance now placed on effective wayfinding in hospitals traditionally blighted by labyrinthine, featureless corridors that are disorientating for patients and visitors and make it longer than necessary for staff to get from A to B.

Another way to reduce patients’ stress levels is to dovetail nature — traditionally seen as aiding the healing process — and architecture. True, there’s nothing new about this: Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium for TB in Finland, completed in 1933, is in a forest and Aalto’s design included routes for walks through the trees. But architects of hospitals increasingly espouse this approach.

Norman Foster’s 2016 Maggie’s Centre for cancer care, set in a garden, is a good example. Foster, who once suffered from and survived bowel cancer, has created a highly transparent, timber-framed structure to “help connect it with the surrounding greenery”, he says. This is reinforced by its many windows, skylights and a greenhouse where patients can grow flowers and other produce. The centre also boasts airy, open-plan interiors, a library, exercise room and kitchen. The intricate geometry of its timber frame echoes Foster's signature high-tech aesthetic but here he has exchanged machine-inspired metal for warmer wood. Ultimately, Foster’s aimed to create a welcoming, homely building “without the institutional references of a hospital or health centre”.

Also emphasising its relationship with nature is Meinhard von Gerkan and Stephan Schütz’s clinic, Wuzhen Medical Park in China. Specialising in neurology and orthopedics, it comprises courtyard houses around a lake in a park, a restaurant and gymnastics rooms. Patient rooms on the upper floors and an outdoor terrace enjoy spectacular views of the picturesque setting.

And the two-storey extension of the Coordinated Centre of Oncology in Lausanne, Switzerland, designed by meier + associés architectes, has a gargantuan green roof which is pierced with skylights to draw natural light in. But its main hallmark is its organic, round-contoured facade and interiors, which create a more soothing, fluid environment than conventional hospitals with their monotonous, sharp-edged, baldly functional corridors.

Finally, the visually arresting Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital in Vigo, Spain, created by luis vidal + architects, is the antithesis of characterless, institutional hospitals. Its monumental façade is coated with prismatic paint, which changes colour depending on how light hits it. Internally, it has a clear layout flooded with natural light. Amenities include operating and consulting rooms, a nursery, library, café and even a heliport.

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