Silvia Gmür Reto Gmür Architekten

« A hospital is a house for man, as the habitation is the house for man» Le Corbusier on his hospital project for Venice, 1964 The hospitals of today must satisfy the increasingly complex requirements of its own organism as well as fulfill specific needs of the human being. Which are the typologies and the architecture, that can fulfill these demands? Two houses, six hospitals, six answers.

« I have been involved in the planning and building of hospitals for the last
30 years. The more I understand about the requirements and challenges of
hospitals, the stronger my conviction grows that we are practicing high tech
medicine in antiquated buildings.
I do not refer to their appearance, but to their essence. In the middle of the last
century the political and economic crisis favoured the elaboration of innovative
concepts for new building types in health planning. But the industrialisation
and technocratic thinking of recent times turned back the wheel of medical
treatments: Instead of progressing in the search of adequate typologies and
an architecture that fulfils the human needs – psychological and physical
– hospital planning has fallen back into unsuitable rigid patterns, unable to
meet the requirements of change, growth, and flexibility. I think there is a big
opportunity and challenge for innovative projects, but their realisation calls for
much improved collaboration between planners and commissioners. The title
of our exposition is a quote by Le Corbusier regarding his hospital project for
Venice (1964). It emphasizes the importance of developing criteria for hospitals
that respond to human needs. We share the same conviction and for this reason
we included two houses along with the hospital projects. They transform in a
very basic way the essential human requirements into architecture: protection;
relation between the individual and the outside world, as well as the universe;
intimacy and the need of light as an element of joy and hope. »
Silvia Gmür