Hospitals as Palaces?

Over the weekend I was watching a blog where someone stated that the NHS builds its hospitals on the premise of money being the overarching priority. While this is a significant constraint to the design and building of new facilities, it is still the patient that is at the heart of the design process. Though this is no new thing.

The conscious design of hospital environments to better suit patient recovery dates to the 19th century with the publication of ‘Notes on Hospitals’ in 1863 by Florence Nightingale. The publication set down four tenets of good design practice which still hold true today: fresh air; light; ample space; and sub-division of space (Nightingale, 1863, p25). The publication goes further to describe ten of the main defects of poor design, even down to the ground on which to build.

However, starting in 1905, the Spanish architect Lluis Domenech i Montaner took Florence Nightingales’s proposals on hospital designs one step further when he built Hospital de Sant Pau. While the first hospital to have dedicated service corridors separate from the patient, the hospital is stunning in both its architecture and design. On first inspection you could be mistaken the hospital was a palace or cathedral, but with its expansive ‘nightingale’ wards and orangery style operating theatre clearly bring the function, if not its form, back to it its primary focus.

While we can no longer afford to build palaces to treat our sick, we must not forget the lessons of the past. Work in Evidence-based design from proponents such as Roger Ulrich, who’s seminal paper ‘View through a window may influence recovery from surgery’ (Ulrich, R. 1984) remind us that treating patients is as much about their surroundings as the treatment that is administered.

So perhaps hospitals do not need to be palaces, but we just need to find a way to keep allowing the patient to connect with the outside world. Not just through a television screen, but through art, architecture, design and most importantly through nature.

Oh and for anyone who is interested to see how stunningly beautiful Hospital de Sant Pau is, I have put the link to their website below.

https://santpaubarcelona.org/en/