Building and healing.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF HOSPITALS

Edited by Cor Wagenaar. Rotterdam: NAi. 2006. [euro]59.50

The new University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) opened in 1997 after ten years of construction and reconstruction. It was soon recognised internationally as an exemplar: in its contribution to the city's public realm, in its internal environment, in its functionality; the kind of hospital that from a UK perspective you only find abroad and can only envy. What is it that enables the Scandinavians, the Dutch and a few other more southerly Europeans to get things right in hospitals? One clue lies in the very existence of this book, the result of an eight-year continuation of the project of study and research that led to the design of the new hospitals. It is therefore in itself an act of enlightened patronage. According to Cor Wagenaar, who plays the role of MC and editor in this 550 page, pop festival of a book, the design of UMCG was actually a 30 year project on which some of the best hospital architects in The Netherlands worked. Reading it you get the sense of tapping into a deep uninterrupted stream of knowledge and understanding reaching back into history but also connecting strongly with tomorrow's possibilities and needs.

The book has seven sections encompassing for example Culture, the City, Clean Air, Healing, Health Strategy; and no fewer than 67 articles some by very well known names including Aaron Betsky, Charles Jencks, Clare Cooper Marcus and Roger Ulrich. The articles range from the highly pertinent 'The Hospital and the City' to the equally topical if arcane 'Indoor Air Quality in Hospitals: an Interdisciplinary Multi-Professional Challenge'. Most of the articles are papers presented at UMCG in an impressive series of conferences that brought together experts from many countries. Inevitably there is some repetition: for example another article called 'The City and the Hospital', and many revisits to the concepts of the healing environment and evidence based design. The papers are wide ranging, easy to read and informative even if those immersed in the current debates on hospital design may not find many new pointers. One striking exception to this is the inclusion of student work done at the Berlage Institute, Amsterdam and at the Rotterdam Academy of Architecture, which made me jump for joy. In the UK no school of architecture has contributed in living memory to the development of architectural solutions in healthcare. Here are fresh, intelligent, stylish and imaginative takes on the subject of the kind that can only come from universities.

Despite the high quality of much of the writing, this could have been a very dull and off-putting volume with so much crammed into one publication; but the exuberant graphic design and lavish illustrations make you want to read it--if not cover to cover then through frequent and rewarding excursions; 'The Book as a City', perhaps.