Doing sickness differently

Architectural writer Vicky Richardson appeals to the UK government to do as Zurich has done and make hospitals a place to get better rather than worse

Image: Kinderspital Zürich

Why does society put so much effort and imagination into designing museums and concert halls, and very little thought into designing hospitals? We’re at our most vulnerable in hospitals as patients, anxious relatives or over-worked staff. We should expect them to provide dignity, respect and care — to heighten our sense of humanity rather than to dehumanise us. But that’s precisely what hospital buildings do, even when they are brand-spanking new, and even more so when they are outdated and falling apart.

Take the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, completed in 2022, which made the shortlist for last year’s Carbuncle Cup (an award for the UK’s worst building). Its design is driven by technology and formulas rather than by human welfare. It’s impossible to know who actually ‘designed’ it (I suspect no one did). The project ‘delivery’ was led by a contractor rather than an architect and the whole process was essentially just about assembling building elements from a catalogue.

But perhaps there is an opportunity to question this approach. Last July, the new UK Government halted a programme launched by Boris Johnson to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. At the time of writing, the announcement of a nationwide consultation on the NHS will probably push the delay further into 2025. Could we use the delay to question the design conventions of hospitals and to think about how best to reinvent their architecture?