Archinect - News

SmithGroup files suit over copyright violations for Michigan hospital design

2024-03-19T18:24:00-04:00

An argument concerning a new pediatric hospital design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has spurred a lawsuit from SmithGroup against the local firm Pure Architects over an alleged violation of the copyright of an earlier unrealized project. Crain’s business journal is reporting on the disputed Mary Free Bed Rehabilitation Hospital project after SmithGroup filed a suit in federal court last week.

In the suit, SmithGroup alleges that the termination of their contract for the new Joan Secchia Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital never resulted in the required payment of licensing and other fees on the part of the hospital. They say that, in the aftermath, the hospital “improperly copied, reproduced, prepared derivative works” before sharing the plans with other architects, “willfully” infringing the copyright to generate new renderings.

Both the firm and the hospital are denying these claims publically. The $60 million project is expected to get underway this spring and be completed in 2026...

Foster + Partners and CannonDesign lead reimagination of Mayo Clinic campus in Minnesota

2023-11-30T11:53:00-05:00

A team comprising Foster + Partners, CannonDesign, and Gilbane Building Company has designed a major healthcare addition to Mayo Clinic’s campus in Rochester, Minnesota. The project, titled 'Bold. Forward. Unbound. in Rochester' features two new high-rise clinical buildings at the center of the campus.

The new buildings measure nine stories to reach a height of 221 feet, with the potential to expand to 420 feet over time. A new central point of arrival is created by the buildings, with north and south drop-offs converging at a unified main entrance.

Above the central arrival point, a sky bridge horizontally links the two new buildings with the existing Gonda Building to improve wayfinding and circulation. The sky bridge is also part of a double-height ‘social ame...

3XN shares new Copenhagen Children's Hospital images ahead of 2026 opening

2023-08-16T13:57:00-04:00

3XN has shared photos of their nearly complete Copenhagen Children’s Hospital project in the Danish capital.

Spanning 58,000 square meters (about 624,300 square feet), the design will yield a total of 219 beds for children, teens, and pregnant women, 15 operating rooms, 57 ambulatory care suites for children and adolescents, another 30 for adults, 14 delivery rooms, and a nuclear diagnostics center.

Once it opens early next year, the hospital will have a capacity for 900 persons in addition to 1,200 staff. The firm says its design is meant to harness the power of play as a palliative measure and will be completed at a cost of $350 million for its client, the Capital Region of Denmark.

Image: 3XN

Formed by two asterisk-shaped volumes meant to evoke the image of a pair of widespread hands connected together at the wrist plate, the bays inside the individual "fingers" in the design are bookended by winter gardens at the tips and share a central core reserved for family lounge...

CannonDesign and Foster + Partners picked to design Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center expansion in NYC

2022-11-17T14:04:00-05:00

A joint team of CannonDesign and Foster + Partners has been selected to design a new high-rise pavilion for Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan’s Midtown East neighborhood.

Design details are still being finalized, but the structure will stand a minimum of 30 stories in height and leverage Cannon’s expertise in modular construction techniques in order to deliver a “pioneering medical facility that will be at the forefront of innovation and patient care.” The project is said to help meet MSK’s “evolving cancer care needs over the next century” and add a more modern, 200-bed facility connected to the institution’s main building at the corner of E. 66th Street and York Avenue.

Foster + Partners explains: “The Pavilion will create incredible human experiences within and beyond the Pavilion walls for patients, their families, and staff. The building will help MSK attract and retain the very best cancer clinicians, researchers, and staff in the world.”

Related on Archinect...

Northwestern Medicine announces $100M+ outpatient center in Chicago's Bronzeville

2022-06-03T15:09:00-04:00

Northwestern Medicine plans to spend more than $100 million to build a 120,000-square-foot outpatient care center in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood — after facing past criticism that it hasn’t done enough to serve patients on the South Side.

If approved by the state Health Facilities and Services Review Board, the proposed medical facility will be positioned on the 4800 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue. The center would include an immediate care center, primary care, specialty care, pharmacy services, mammograms, lab tests, chemotherapy, and programs to promote community health. It is expected to serve more than 50,000 patients a year. In addition, the project is expected to create 1,000 construction and 100 healthcare and related jobs. Construction could begin in summer 2023 with a scheduled opening in summer 2025.

The proposal aligns with Chicago Mayor Lightfoot’s $1.4 billion INVEST South/West program, an initiative that aims to revitalize 12 commercial corridors within 10 South and West Side community areas. As detailed by the Chicago Tribune, Northwestern has faced criticism for its prioritization of investment in higher-income areas, rather than lower-income communities of color. While Northwestern Medicine dis...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal new video of modular hospital prototype

2022-04-12T09:00:00-04:00

One of the most promising recent healthcare infrastructure concepts has engendered an offshoot project that looks to expand on its original framework design.

As a product of the research done for their collaboration on the Al Daayan Health District Master Plan in Doha, OMA and Buro Happold have created a prototype for a low-rise hospital structure commissioned by the Hamad Medical Corporation.

Previously on Archinect: OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

Image © HMC

The prototype appears to consist of similar two-story-high modular units that can be adapted and reconfigured to allow for maximal variation and minimal costs. Scalable, self-sufficient, and built using a considerable amount of 3D printing technology, the design is a sustainable refresh to the important typology and hopes to see further use in other climates once the Qatari concept catches on.

Image © HMC

“Medical technology is advancing exponentially, leaving hospitals to...

Kashef Chowdhury’s Friendship Hospital named 2021 World’s Best New Building by RIBA

2022-01-25T19:47:00-05:00

One of designer Kashef Chowdhury and URBANA’s superlative recent works has received a huge honor from the UK’s oldest architectural organization. The Royal Institute of British Architects has today announced the firm’s Friendship Hospital project in Bangladesh as the winner of the 2021 International Prize for the World’s Best New Building.

The rural hospital is one of several firm projects in the country commissioned by a nonprofit group called Friendship that looks to empower underdeveloped communities in different regions of the country through hands-on social innovation and collaboration. The hospital provides the village of Satkhira, which has been heavily impacted by rising sea levels related to climate change. The village has particularly bad agricultural problems related to the rising waters, which the project was also able to address through the introduction of a new stormwater drainage system that simultaneously produces valuable drinking water and serves in the much-neede...

Herzog & de Meuron-designed hospital clad in terracotta revealed for UC San Francisco

2022-01-04T12:56:00-05:00

UCSF has released images of their proposed Helen Diller Medical Center, designed by Herzog & de Meuron in collaboration with HDR Architecture. The 15-story hospital will be constructed on UCSF’s Parnassus Heights campus, with 336 inpatient beds, diagnostic and treatment services, clinical support services, and public areas spread across the 900,000 square foot facility.

In addition to constructing a new hospital, the project will see the renovation of the existing Moffitt and Long hospitals, which when combined with the new building, give the campus a total of 682 inpatient beds. The upgraded capacity is in response to the region’s rising healthcare needs, with 3000 patients turned away from the campus hospital in 2019 due to a lack of beds. The renovations are also part of an effort to bring the entire site in line with earthquake safety standards.

UCSF Helen Diller Medical Center. Image by Herzog & de Meuron

“In designing this hospital, we are re-imagining the space around it, c...

MASS Design's Michael Murphy says we're failing to learn the epidemic design lessons Florence Nightingale provided 150 years ago

2021-12-29T16:39:00-05:00

At our peril, we have ignored Nightingale’s prescriptions. The history of the hospital contains clear lessons about the importance of air movement through buildings, the public health risks of poor design, and the dangers of technological reliance. Architecture professionals should look back to see what else has been forgotten or ignored in the race to merge art and technology. Whose lives might be at stake if they don’t?

Murphy is a principal at Boston-based MASS Design Group and the author of The Architecture of Health: Hospital Design and the Construction of Dignity, which accompanies the firm’s recent exhibition Design and Healing: Creative Responses to Epidemics on view at the Cooper Hewitt until February 23rd.

In it, Murphy argues that the COVID pandemic has affected a new paradigm in the ways architects and healthcare designers think about hospitals that are reliant on air, either cooled or circulated by mechanical systems, and failed in their attempts to mitigate the virus’ spread by fenestration that is now an impediment to the application of effective inpatient treatment.

Interior of MASS Design Group's Butaro Hospital in Ruhengeri, Rwanda. Photo: Iwan Baan.

“Like all crises that reveal cracks in the system, the pandemic has prompted a public reckoning with the role of buildings in shaping our health. Recent reporting is waking up to the crisis of breathability in buildings, raising questi...

A ‘hospital of the future’: Foster + Partners opens new medical school building at UPenn

2021-11-19T09:00:00-05:00

With the spiritual and material well-being of its next-generation patients in mind, the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine has opened an inpatient facility from Foster + Partners and others that is being heralded as a “hospital of the future.”

Located on Penn’s historic West Philadelphia campus, The Pavillion is the university’s answer to the growing body of scholarship that supports a patient-oriented approach to care that is embodied in its design and functionality.

“The new Pavilion is designed to completely redefine the future of healthcare,” Norman Foster said. “The building enables innovations that reflect University of Pennsylvania’s history of medical firsts, creating a truly flexible facility that molds itself to the needs of the patient. Responsive, adaptable and future-proof, it will allow the hospital to continue its crucial life-saving work and remain at the cutting edge of patient care.”

The University indeed h...

OMA and Buro Happold reveal designs for the Al Daayan Health District in Doha

2021-10-18T14:50:00-04:00

Final drafts for the joint OMA and Buro Happold-designed Al Daayan Health District are now available, showcasing a localized model of healthcare infrastructure that OMA Partner Reinier de Graaf hopes will be transplanted from Doha, Qatar to the rest of the world.

Image © OMA

The 1.3-million-square-meter (14-million-square-foot) facility will be completely self-sustaining thanks to onsite prefabrication, 3D printing, an agricultural element, and built-in solar farm.

Image © OMA

“Architects have long aimed to provide the hospital with a final solution. This proposal starts from the opposite end: viewing the hospital as the type of building that is forever under construction, as an organism for which space and time must be considered equally,” de Graaf said in a statement.

Image © OMA

The development is anchored by a two-story building that houses a teaching hospital, women’s and children’s hospitals, ambulatory care, and clinical facilities. The new hospital will have capacity for 1,400...

Adjaye Associates reveals designs for a massive new healthcare infrastructure project in Ghana

2021-08-26T14:09:00-04:00

As part of the architect’s ongoing commitment to his native country, David Adjaye has revealed designs for a massive new public infrastructure project that will provide over 100 new healthcare facilities to the people of Ghana.

Dubbed Agenda 111, the government-backed initiative will add 101 district hospitals as well as 10 new regional hospitals to the rapidly developing West African nation. The existing Effia-Nkwanta Regional Hospital will be provided with a much-needed restoration as well.

Courtesy Adjaye Associates

“By approaching the hospital as more than just a place for the provision of medical services, the design scheme aims to unlock the potential of this ambitious initiative by repositioning the hospital as a piece of community infrastructure that embodies sustainability, efficiency, and generously provides green spaces to facilitate wellness and healing,” the firm said in a statement.

Courtesy Adjaye Associates

Ghana’s infrastructure has been steadily improving since the...

Snøhetta and HGA selected to design new Parnassus Research and Academic Building at UCSF

2021-07-16T16:40:00-04:00

Snøhetta and HGA are teaming up to design the new Parnassus Research and Academic Building (PRAB) at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).

The approximately $700 million project will anchor a redesigned west end of the campus. The building is being accompanied by extensive site improvements in the surrounding area and a new hospital planned for the east end of the Parnassus Heights campus. Together, these projects are part of phase one of the Comprehensive Parnassus Heights Plan, a sweeping multi-decade revitalization of the campus.

The PRAB project will replace UC Hall, UCSF’s oldest building at Parnassus Heights, which was built in 1917. Preliminary plans for the building call for a 270,000-square-foot space with wet labs, computational labs, modern classrooms, and a nursing school, all supported by open spaces and other public realm improvements. 12,000 square feet will be set aside for education, allowing graduate students to work in labs and attend classes under ...

HENN and C.F. Møller Architects to design new geometric hospital in Munich

2021-02-16T17:56:00-05:00

HENN and C.F. Møller Architects win first prize for the new Grosshadern Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Clinic Campus, triumphing over 17 other planning teams who competed for the commission. The architects plan to transform the existing structures to create a green, connected, and friendly environment for medical care, research, and education.

"...we are looking forward to continuing our work in collaboration with HENN and the rest of the team as well as LMU to realize a new building and a campus which meet the structural demands and requirements of a university hospital of the future and at the same time enhance the urban image based on Healing Architecture principles and by putting people in the center," said Klavs Hyttel, Partner at C.F. Møller Architects, in a statement.

The new building comprises a total of six new clinical centers and is the largest public construction project in Bavaria since the hospital was built in the 1960s/70s. Three centers will be introduced: the c...

Carlo Ratti Associati complete COVID-19 medical pod prototype

2020-04-21T11:51:00-04:00

Carlo Ratti Associati has completed and installed the first unit of CURA in Turin, Northern Italy. Previously reported on Archinect, we reported on the project, which stands for "Connected Unites for Respiratory Ailments" was spearheaded by Carlo Ratti Associati and Italian architect Italo Rota. The concept utilized shipping containers to develop a modular system of pods for treating COVID-19 patients. Met with confusion, some were uncertain of the feasibility of the proposal, but now the first steps have become a reality.

The plug-in Intensive-Care Pods converted from shipping containers have come to fruition in just four weeks following their initial launch. The speed of the design and production effort come as a result of an international task force that, in addition to designers from Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rato, include engineers at Jacobs and health technology company Philips for medical equipment supply.

Initial concept renderings.

With the goal to improve the efficie...

AIA’s COVID-19 Task Force publishes design guide for retrofitting buildings for hospital use

2020-04-08T16:23:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has published a preliminary “Preparedness Assessment Tool” to help architects and healthcare directors appropriately select existing buildings for reuse as Alternative Care Sites (ACS).

The document brings together best practices for ACS design based on existing and recently implemented directives and was developed according to “joint professional input from trained and experienced health care architects, designers, engineers, scientists, life-safety consultants, healthcare professionals, and hospital facility operations,” according to the document.

The Tool stakes out key priorities for these temporary sites and offers design guidance for limiting the spread of viruses within the facility while establishing a baseline level of quality and functionality for the healthcare delivered in these spaces.

Previously on Archinect: “AIA publishes COVID-19 database to share best practices in hospital conversion design.” View of the temporary hospi...

2,500-bed hospital conversion at NYC’s Javits Center opens

2020-04-03T18:59:00-04:00

This week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that work on the plan to convert the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a 2,500-bed temporary hospital has been completed.

The temporary hospital facility is one of four sites currently under construction across the region, facilities that will make up the first phase of an effort launched by the Governor to increase the number of hospital beds across the downstate area. The conversions are being handled by a federal response team led by the Army Corps of Engineers. Additional project partners include: The state of New York, the city of New York, the New York National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the General Services Administration, the Defense Department, and members of the United States armed forces, according to the the US Department of Defense website.

In the case of the Javits Center, the expansi...

AIA publishes COVID-19 database to share best practices in hospital conversion design

2020-04-03T17:57:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is currently assembling a database containing information on the health care facilities, both traditional and temporary, and the design professionals around the world mobilizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, AIA announced the creation of an internal COVID-19 task force that seeks to provide expert advice on how existing buildings can be rapidly converted for temporary hospital use.

Previously on Archinect: “AIA launches COVID-19 task force to advise building adaptation for hospital use initiatives.”View of the repurposed Oakland Municipal Auditorium during the 1918 flu epidemic. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Edward A. "Doc" Rogers.

As part of that group’s work, AIA has published the COVID-19 ArchMap, an online library created in partnership with the Kansas University Institute of Health + Wellness Design. The website collects information on these medical facilities in order to create a searchable resource for med...

Carlo Ratti and collaborators propose CURA: emergency COVID-19 medical pods inside converted shipping containers

2020-03-30T17:47:00-04:00

In an effort to rapidly boost effective medical response to the devastating COVID-19 outbreak, an international network of architects, engineers, doctors, military experts, and NGOs have developed an open-source solution to convert shipping containers into plug-in Intensive-Care Units. A first prototype is currently being developed in Milan, Italy where the pandemic has hit especially hard.

The project, called CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments, and also "cure" in Latin), was initiated by Italian architect, engineer, and director of MIT's Senseable City Lab Carlo Ratti with fellow Italian architect Italo Rota.

Image courtesy of CURA/Carlo Ratti Associati.

"CURA is a compact Intensive-Care pod for patients with respiratory infections, hosted in a 20-foot intermodal container with biocontainment (thanks to negative pressure)," explains the project description. "Each unit works autonomously and can be shipped anywhere. Individual pods are connected by an inflatable structure...

New York City enlists temporary morgues as existing facilities reach capacity

2020-03-30T13:50:00-04:00

As the tragic nature of the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to take shape in New York City, reports have surfaced indicating that the city's hospitals and municipal departments are anticipating that regional morgue facilities will reach or exceed their designed capacity.

CNN reports that New York City officials have begun setting up makeshift morgues in refrigerated trailers outside of Elmhurst Hospital in Queens and New York Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, where a large number of COVID-19 related deaths have occurred.

Previously on Archinect: "US Army Corps of Engineers has a plan to convert hotels into “ICU-like” facilities." The Army Corps of Engineers has developed a standard plan for converting hotels into makeshift hospital wards. Shown: The Army Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / AgnosticPreachersKid.

The development marks the first time that the city has set up such temporary facilities since the terrorist attacks of 9/1...

AIA launches COVID-19 task force to advise building adaptation for hospital use initiatives

2020-03-26T15:13:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced the creation of a special task force that aims to educate public officials, healthcare facilities, and other architects on how to adapt existing buildings for temporary hospital use.

According to a statement published by the group this morning, the task force will encourage "federal, state and local government to adapt appropriate existing buildings to meet the growing healthcare and quarantine needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic," a phenomenon that has already begun to take shape in some of the cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, where the need for hospital beds is quickly outstripping the available supply.

US Army Corps of Engineers has a plan to convert hotels into “ICU-like” facilities

2020-03-23T21:47:00-04:00

In the mad dash to make up for a decades-long decline in overall medical capacity in the United States that has come into full relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has had to step in and help create makeshift hospitals across the country so that people suffering from the disease can receive the treatment they need.

As previously reported, states and local municipalities across the country are working to retrofit existing buildings, including bankrupt hospitals, empty convention centers, and increasingly, hotels, to meet the growing need for Intensive Care facilities.

Previously on Archinect: “NYC considers converting Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to temporary medical facility.” Photo by Flickr user ajay_suresh, licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0

Those municipalities are largely putting into effect a plan developed by the Army Corps that was communicated in a press briefing given on Friday, March 20th via the US Army’s Twitter acc...

States convert underutilized buildings and bankrupt hospitals into tactical medical facilities

2020-03-23T17:01:00-04:00

Across the country, as the spread of the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow, cities and states are quickly putting vacant or underutilized buildings to use as makeshift medical facilities.

Last week, Archinect reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was working to converting the Javtis Center in Manhattan, as well as three other facilities, into temporary hospital wards to deal with the onslaught of patients suffering from the COVID-19 disease.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has moved to take over two existing hospital facilities that had previously shuttered—St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles and Seton Medical Center in Daly City—to help with that’s state’s rapid medical facility mobilization, as well. SFGate reports that the Seton facility could bring 357 hospital beds online, while The Los Angeles Times writes that the St. Vincent facility could render 177 hospital beds.

Meanwhile, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan recently moved to take over the Baltimore C...

German military to build 1,000-bed coronavirus hospital in Berlin

2020-03-19T15:38:00-04:00

The Berlin government said on Tuesday it would create a new hospital to cope with a likely huge increase in coronavirus cases. The facility, which will house up to 1,000 patients, will be set up in the Berlin Messe trade fair exhibition grounds in the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district of the German capital. The hospital will be built with the help of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr.

As the coronavirus outbreak rapidly expands also in Germany, officials in Berlin hope to prevent potential bottlenecks in the capital's hospital system with a new medical facility specifically for COVID-19 patients. The country now has more than 10,000 confirmed cases — the third highest in Europe after Italy and Spain.

Earlier this year, the impromptu construction efforts in Wuhan, China made headlines when two emergency specialty field hospitals with a combined capacity of 2,300 beds were erected in a matter of only days. The round-the-clock endeavor was streamed live by Chinese state media and attracted a huge audience of citizens that had been ordered not to go outside for several weeks.

Wuhan's Huoshenshan Hospital built in 10 days to combat coronavirus

2020-02-03T13:19:00-05:00

The first patients arrived Monday at a specialized hospital built in just 10 days as part of China’s intensive efforts to fight a new virus. Huoshenshan Hospital and a second facility with 1,500 beds that’s due to open this week were built by construction crews who are working around the clock in Wuhan, the city in central China where the outbreak was first detected in December. Most of the city’s 11 million people are barred from leaving the area.

The hospital was built by a 7,000-member crew of carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other specialists, the Los Angeles Times reports. The final result is a two-story, 600,000-square-foot facility, containing isolations wards and 30 intensive care units. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Huoshenshan Hospital received its first patients on Monday morning.

Archinect previously covered the rising coronavirus epidemic in Central China reporting the expected completion of the Huoshenshan Hospital, opened today and the plans to follow with opening of the Leishenshan Hospital this Wednesday, February 5th.

While Wuhan is racing to build two new coronavirus hospitals within days, millions watch the construction streamed live

2020-01-29T15:27:00-05:00

Medics in Wuhan, the city of 11 million people where the virus originated, have described overcrowded hospitals and a shortage of test kits, protective gear, and other medical equipment. To alleviate this pressure, city authorities last Friday announced plans to build a new hospital from scratch in just six days, to be used beginning February 3.

Chinese officials are under increasing pressure to combat the spread of the deadly coronavirus which has already claimed the lives of at least 130 people and is quickly spreading around the world.

The epidemic originated in Wuhan, the most populous city in Central China and home to more than 11 million, where authorities have begun erecting two large emergency hospitals that are set to be commissioned on February 3 (Huoshenshan Hospital with a 1,000-bed capacity) and February 5 (Leishenshan Hospital, 1,300 beds), respectively.

Live stream, click the play button to view. Via CCTV

Chinese state media has been live-streaming the round-the-clock construction efforts, and huge audiences have been closely following — a mild boredom relief for millions of people that have been advised not to go outside to limit the chances of contagion.

Still from the construction live-stream on January 30 (local time). Source: CCTV

Shanghai Daily reports that "netizens have been carefully scrut...

Hospitals build apartments to assist housing-insecure patients

2019-10-02T19:45:00-04:00

Legally and morally, hospitals cannot discharge patients if they have no safe place to go. So patients who are homeless, frail or live alone, or have unstable housing, can occupy hospital beds for weeks or months – long after their acute medical problem is resolved.

Hospitals with housing-insecure patients are getting creative in an attempt to both provide more holistic care for their patients while also reducing overall patient and hospital costs. It can cost upwards of $2,700 to spend a night in a hospital, according to a USA Today report, an amount that could be better spent on conventional housing options.

The trend comes as changes to federal guidelines dictating how tax-exempt hospitals channel their charitable contributions make investing in housing easier for these organizations. In Denver, for example, the Denver Housing Authority recently partnered with a the Denver Health Medical Center hospital to refurbish a mothballed building into 15 senior housing apartments.

Peg Burnette, the hospital’s chief financial officer, told USA Today, “This is an experiment of sorts. We might be able to help better their lives, as well as help the financials of the hospital and help free up capacity for the patients that need to come to see us for ac...

The architecture of death and dying

2018-12-26T17:09:00-05:00

The idea of death and dying is a rather bleak subject. Many avoid discussion of the matter at all costs, while others plan to prolong its advancement as years pass. However, regardless of one's preconceived notions, death is a necessary part of life. Yet, perhaps our relationship and understanding of death can be changed with the help of architecture. Alison Killing, of Killing Architects, explains that "where we die is a key part of how we die." Her work as an architect and urban designer has allowed her to explore the notion of death and how architecture and urban strategy can help the general public understand the relationship between death and architecture.

In 2014, Killing spearheaded a project for the Venice Architecture Biennale called Death in Venice. Through the project, she dissected the architectural timeline of hospitals, hospices, cemeteries, and crematoriums to highlight how space is allocated fo...

Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium is now for sale

2018-06-06T15:44:00-04:00

Alvar Aalto's Paimio Sanatorium in Finland is now for sale. Currently owned by the Hospital District of Southwest Finland, the district has announced its plans to sell the building by fall of 2018. The bidding period will end on August 23.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image: LeonL/Flickr.

Considered a national heritage site, Aalto's Sanatorium was completed in 1933 bringing international recognition to the country. His modern design was carefully tailored to the needs of tuberculosis patients for which the facility was built.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image: LeonL/Flickr.

Paimio Sanatorium by Alvar Aalto, 1933, located in Paimio, Finland. Image...

Manuel Herz Architect's rural hospital expansion in Senegal

2018-06-05T16:12:00-04:00

The Switzerland-based firm Manuel Herz Architect has been selected to design an important new expansion for a rural hospital in the Tambacounda region of Senegal. Conceived and funded by the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Le Korsa, the facility's expansion will help alleviate a current overcrowding issue.

The hospital currently serves 20,000 patients per year from the surrounding area and is in desperate need of more space to accommodate these numbers.

Manuel Herz’s design aims to sensitively address the brief with a focus on greater coherence and comfort within the space. The design consists of a winding curvilinear building with lattice brickwork to help alleviate the region's extreme temperatures.