Trevor Paglen, Jacob Appelbaum Autonomy Cube Tor network Relay & Hotspot

Did you know that the reason most doctors still actively use pagers at work has an architectural explanation? That hospitals, despite being one of the least sexy or experimental of building types, are perhaps the closest thing we have to a public architectural interface? And that radio waves today are some of the most consequential spatial components?

Let’s face it: hospitals are notoriously dense and unattractive buildings. But they may have something to teach us about architecture’s relationship to wireless technology. Lurking within their walls is a catalog of anti-electromagnetic metals that makes their wall sections likely the most geologically diverse of any building type. I won’t bore you with the details but given the variety of machines involved in keeping people alive along with sanitary requirements, you can imagine the wide assortment of architectural junk required to make hospital spaces function properly. For example, most X-ray and CT (Computerized Tomography) examination rooms contain a lead veneer for insulation; MRT (Magnetic Resonance Tomography) rooms require a layer of copper to mitigate magnetic wave propagation; steel paneling is required in operating rooms for hygiene; and even waiting/patient rooms typically need at least two sheets of drywall on both sides for sound isolation.

All of this wall stuff makes it extremely difficult for cellular phone signals to get through hospital spaces. This lack of connectivity might be most familiar to frustrated waiting room visitors, but it has an interesting effect on how doctors, nurses, and staff go about their work. Unable to rely on their cell phones, they resort to that epitome of 1990s technology: the pager. According to a 2016 Boston Globe report, pagers are “still the primary device doctors and other health care workers use to communicate with each other every day,” and at least 85 percent of U.S. hospitals still actively use them. This is because pagers, or “beepers,” occupy a unique space in the electromagnetic spectrum. They use a Very High Frequency much like FM radio, typically in the 138–466 MHz range. As a result, their signals pass through walls easier, and though pager communications are dumber (they can’t send as much information), they are more reliable than their cellular counterparts. This makes them quite useful in emergency situations or inside a steel-walled room.

That architecture can force an outdated technology on even the most sophisticated of professions is a testament to the power of the built environment

That architecture can force an outdated technology on even the most sophisticated of professions is a testament to the power of the built environment. But it also says a lot about our reliance on the immaterial layer of signals. In a way, hospitals perfectly illustrate the tension between architecture (walls) and technology (radio waves). Movement throughout a hospital is dependent on the one-way communication channels facilitated by pagers: a doctor receives a message, then is forced to either find a phone, or go to a specific location. This choreography makes for excellent drama in medical television shows, but also suggests a relatively unexplored site for architectural intervention.

If, as previously mentioned, buildings operate as giant interfaces, how can architects address the immaterial dimension of those mechanisms? While thermodynamics remains the principal immaterial topic amongst figures like Inaki Abalos, Renata Snetkiewicz, Philippe Rahm, and others, radio waves have a less formed dialogue in architecture. This might be due to the electromagnetic spectrum’s complexity, and the lack of a spectroscopic equivalent to a psychrometric comfort chart. But we can, however, look to practices operating within that realm for hints on designing with waves. The work of artists like Julian Oliver and Trevor Paglen can help architects think about signals and space. Oliver, co-author of the Critical Engineering Manifesto, works primarily to disrupt and make visible the layer of communication signals enveloping us. His projects hack devices, and reveal the spatial politics of radio waves at the local and geopolitical scale. Paglen works across media and aestheticizes the matter underlying engineered gadgetry; his 2014, Autonomy Cube (see cover photograph), for example, explores the logic of the WiFi hotspot and turns a room into an anonymous internet access point.

Of course, hospitals are rarely sites for architectural experimentation. Healthcare architects and gadget enthusiasts are tackling the issue from the other end and researching how to implement more connectivity into hospitals through the use of embedded transmitters and more wiring. 

One idea is to implement hospital-wide radio networks, which would host all patient files, status of machines, and even provide internet connection for bed lying patients via tablet PCs. Another is to replace pagers altogether with encrypted messaging apps to ensure doctor-patient confidentiality. In other words, more gadgets might solve the problem.

But is it possible for architecture to learn from the electromagnetic debris that envelopes us? If, to quote Le Corbusier, “architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light,” can we use those same architectural techniques for playing with radio waves? Light, after all, is just another part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our dependence on signals has very real architectural ramifications, so what if we adopted that nebulous energy and used it as a building material or a spatial effect? What might this look like?