'Building to Heal': New exhibition explores the future of healthcare architecture

The Architekturmuseum der TUM (Pinakothek der Moderne) in Munich, Germany, is to launch an exhibition on hospital design. Titled Building to Heal: New Architecture for Hospitals, the show is intended as “an impulse and stimulus for this rethinking,” with three sections comprising the themes: Experiment, Evidence, and Exchange.

“Hospital architecture as a building typology has a long and complex history of development, driven by rapid medical advances,” the organizers said in a statement about the exhibition. “In the twentieth century, the factors of efficiency, economy, flexibility, and rationalization increasingly dominated planning and design. Clinics have thus mutated into highly technical machines.”

“Essential needs and feelings of patients and caregivers have been pushed into the background, and the resulting psycho-social consequences are severe,” the organizers added. “However, approaches related to 'healing architecture,' which originated in North America and has also been successfully adapted in Europe, have provided the impetus in recent years to reform healthcare design and to place people back in the focus of design and planning.”

The exhibition will focus on the evidence-based design of hospitals and seven ‘environmental variables’ which can influence patients: Orientation, Odorscape, Soundscape, Privacy and Withdrawal, Power Points, View and Foresight, and Human Scale. 

Projects on display will include the Agatharied District Hospital (Nickl und Partner Architekten, 1998), the Friendship Hospital Satkhira (Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA, 2018), and the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in Utrecht (LIAG architects + engineers, 2018).

The exhibition’s third space, the forum, will invite visitors into a dialogue on the future of hospitals, with lectures, debates, and workshops. A library and film contributions will also be supported, as will a series of installations titled MAKING SENSE by the Norwegian artist and olfactory researcher Sissel Tolaas.

The exhibition will be open from July 12th to January 21, 2024.