From mid-nineteenth century to postwar hospital design
Conclusion
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travel distances were reduced, so less staff was needed, and less money was spent. This resulted in optimized deep floor plans and vertical plans, that became possible thanks to the advent of improved vertical transportation systems. The outcome was an urban block-plan hospital without courtyards or green spaces as the building made impossible the creation of a direct connection with the ground plane for large numbers of patients. (Guenther, 2013). Nature was taken out from the equation and hospitals were now industrial and sterile spaces.
The uplifting concern on patient’s mental well-being developed in the first part of the twentieth century was suddenly made irrelevant by the advent of antibiotics. The holistic ideas of Alto and duiker were replaced by a constant search for efficiency and flexibility, leaving the social needs of a patient in a windowless dark room placed in the middle of a pavilion of an urban Hospital. Nature was eradicated from the hospital environment that had preferred decontaminating ultraviolet lights and mechanical ventilation to sunshine and fresh air. A study conducted in 2018 by professor Veronica Soebarto and Doctor Mohamed S. Abdelaal criticizes design strategies of twentieth one century sustainable hospitals which are mostly focused on their impact on the environment and it proposes the development of a true sustainable hospital, described as “a restorative environment that connects human health with nature by combining salutogenic and biophilic design principles with restorative environmental design strategies”. (Abdelaal, 2018) In the twenty-one century, the biocentric ideas applied in the design of Sanatoriums at the beginning of the twentieth century are more modern than ever.
