Hospitals: The Latest Architecture and News

Cities have always been a stage for transformations. The directions, the flows, the different ways of using the spaces, the desires, all change and give way to new places and needs. Such richness provides the city with an innovative and mutable character, but it also implies demand for more flexible architecture in terms of the functional program and structure. Especially during the past year, we have witnessed - at breakneck speed - great changes in the cities and urban spaces. The pandemic brought new paradigms that suddenly disrupted long-established norms. Houses became offices, offices became deserts, hotels turned into health facilities, and stadiums turned into hospitals. Meanwhile, architecture has had to reveal its flexibility to support purposes that could not be foreseen. This adaptability seems to have become the key to creating spaces that are coherent with our current lifestyle and the speed of modern times.

In a Design and the City episode - a podcast by reSITE on how to make cities more livable – architect and founder of Doula x Design and co-founder of SHoP Architects Kim Holden discusses how rethinking and redesigning the ways birth is approached can change the outcomes of labor and birth experiences, and improve the qualities of life for both the babies and women giving birth to them. The interview explores how it is crucial to investigate the spaces where generations come into this world, just as we have been planning and building better cities for them to work and live in.

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The COVID-19 Pandemic is a disruptive moment for our world, and it’s poised to spur transformative shifts in design, from how we experience our homes and offices to the plans of our cities. The webcast series Design Disruption explores these shifts—and address issues like climate change, inequality, and the housing crisis— through chats with visionaries like architects, designers, planners and thinkers; putting forward creative solutions and reimagining the future of the built environment.

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As the healthcare infrastructure is becoming overwhelmed and hospitals around the world are reaching their capacities, new alternative possibilities are emerging. In response to bed shortage and facility saturation, architects around the world are taking action, in the on-going fight against the coronavirus. Focusing their knowhow to find fast and efficient design solutions that can be implemented anywhere, they are proposing flexible, fast assembled, mobile, and simple structures. With a very tight timetable, some projects are already implemented and in service, while others remain on a conceptual level, waiting to be adopted.

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While the risk of COVID-19 is increasing everywhere in the world, the stable situation in Wuhan allowed officials to stop operations in the newly settled temporary hospitals to fight the Coronavirus outbreak.

The government of Wuhan City in China has decided to build a 1,000 bed hospital in six days to fight the recent coronavirus outbreak. The project aims builds off the previous construction of Beijing Xiaotangshan Hospital in just a week's time back in 2003. As the quarantined Wuhan City's existing hospitals are overwhelmed, they have turned to social media for medical supplies and have begun to turn away patients.

A floor plan is an interesting way to represent and approach the functional program of hospitals and health centers, where the complexity of the system implies the need for specific studies of the distribution and spatial organization for proper health care.

From our published projects, we have found numerous solutions and possibilities for health centers and hospitals depending on the site's specific needs.

Below, we have selected 50 on-site floor plan examples that can help you better understand how architects design hospitals and health care centers.

Brooklyn-based design studio, workshop and think tank CAZA (Carlos Arnaiz Architects) has announced its plans for Ospital Pacifica de Juan and Juana Angara, a hybrid hospital and trauma center prototype located in rural Baler, Philippines. As the first combined General Hospital and Trauma Care Center in the country, the project will drastically improve medical support in this remote area.

With a daily patient capacity of 75 people, the 6,120-square-meter space will feature a variety of medical services, including maternity wards, imaging, operating rooms, a chapel, and a café.

“The Hospital will also offer patients a therapeutic presence of nature, as the luscious exterior landscape of Baler permeates the facility through a series of undulating canopies that create an architectural figure in an open field of green" - described the architects in a media release.

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Jacques Herzog’s first lecture in Denmark will be livestreamed on April 28, from 11:30 – 1:30 EST, during which the Swiss architect will discuss the New North Zealand Hospital project. Herzog & de Meuron, along with Danish firm Vilhelm Lauritzen Architects, was selected to design the 124,000-square-meter facility during an international design competition last year. To be built near Hillerød, the hospital will be Herzog & de Meuron’s first project in Scandinavia. Learn more about the project and view the livestream of the lecture after the break.