Houses help to heal – this is a brief summary of the core message of the current exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TU München. Based on scientific studies, the show is dedicated to hospital construction and how its design can influence the well-being of patients. There is not only something to see and read in the exhibition, but also something to smell.

Houses help to heal – this is a brief summary of the core message of the current exhibition at the Architekturmuseum der TU München. Based on scientific studies, the show is dedicated to hospital construction and how its design can influence the well-being of patients. There is not only something to see and read in the exhibition, but also something to smell.

At first glance, the wall looks almost like any other. However, an elongated, rectangular surface stands out slightly from the white in terms of color and texture. What is special about this surface is that if you run your fingertips over it, it activates odor molecules. The wall begins to smell; the scent is reminiscent of earth or moss, mixed with something else, harder to name. The installation “MAKING SENSE” by Norwegian artist and smell researcher Sissel Tolaas can be smelled in an exhibition about hospital architecture. When designing hospitals, the olfactory backdrop is one of several factors that can influence how the architecture affects the well-being of patients. On the wall in the exhibition, Tolaas’ installation is now intended to make “healing smells” tangible for visitors.

On July 11, the Architecture Museum of the Technical University of Munich opened the exhibition “Das Kranke(n)haus. How architecture helps to heal”. It is about the architecture of hospitals and the effects – both negative and positive – that these buildings can have on people. In short: how appropriately designed architecture can help sick people recover. The exhibition was curated by architectural psychologist Tanja C. Vollmer, Director of the Museum of Architecture Andres Lepik and Lisa Luksch, research assistant at the Chair of Architectural Theory and Curatorial Practice. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach is the patron of the exhibition.

The background to the exhibition is also a shortcoming that has been recognized in hospital construction in Germany. After clinics in the 20th century were primarily geared towards efficiency and economy, flexibility and rationalization, the approaches of “healing architecture” are now focusing on people again. However, such approaches and “evidence-based design” – i.e. design based on scientific findings – are not yet widely enough recognized and applied in Germany, as the museum writes. The exhibition aims to encourage a rethink of the role architecture plays in the healthcare sector and the possibilities and tasks of hospital construction.

Take a look at this post on Instagram

A post shared by Architekturmuseum der TUM (@architekturmuseum_tum)

The installation at the beginning of the exhibition is almost like looking through an oversized keyhole into a hospital room. The wall on the left is mirrored; a green fabric panel is suspended in the room and separates a “room”. Through a large, circular cut-out in the fabric, visitors can see the head end of a hospital bed from behind. The few elements are enough to evoke associations with a patient’s room. The exhibition also provides insights into such rooms. And the show will be about something else that the installation may suggest. The cut-out in the fabric directs the visitor’s gaze. As you are standing behind the hospital bed, you are looking in the same direction and therefore have the same view as a patient in the bed. And the hospital bed faces the window front onto the meadow in front of the museum. Visitors take on the perspective of the patients.

The exhibition is divided into three sections. The first, entitled “Experiment”, presents therapy and aftercare facilities. Photos, plans, models and texts in German and English, displayed on large wooden stands, convey the examples. The title of the section refers to the fact that these facilities are less regulated, less technical and less complex than hospitals – and have therefore long been a field of experimentation for healing architecture, according to the museum. The buildings presented include the REHAB in Basel, a clinic for the rehabilitation of people with brain damage and/or paraplegia. The new REHAB building by Herzog & de Meuron opened in 2002. The project presentations are accompanied by large infographics on the side walls, for example on the lifespan of hospitals.

The second and central section of the exhibition is also visually different from the first. While the displays in the first section were curved and irregularly shaped, the supports for the examples in the second section are rectangular. The color scheme here is closely linked to the structure of the content.

Entitled “Evidence”, this section presents evidence-based design, as well as the “healing seven”. These refer to factors in the hospital architecture that can influence the stress experienced by severely and chronically ill patients. In order to reduce such harmful stress, these environmental factors can be taken into account when designing the buildings.

The Healing Seven are based on scientific research by Vollmer and architect Gemma Koppen. Over a period of more than ten years, they investigated the influence that the environment in hospitals has on the stress perception of seriously and chronically ill patients. Last year, Vollmer and Koppen then defined the following “healing seven”:

• Orientation
• Olfactory environment
• Soundscape
• Privacy and retreat
• Power points
• View and foresight
• Human scale

In preparation for the exhibition, TUM Master’s students analyzed national and international hospital projects with regard to these seven factors. The 13 projects presented in the exhibition are each assigned to one of the healing seven. The color concept of the displays – each of the factors is assigned a color – picks up on this visually.

Among the projects presented in the second part of the exhibition is the Agatharied Hospital in Hausham, Bavaria, designed by Nickl and Partner and completed in 1998. International examples include the Friendship Hospital Satkhira in southwest Bangladesh by Kashef Chowdhury/URBANA (2018) and the Bürgerspital Solothurn in Switzerland by Silvia Gmür Reto Gmür Architekten (2021). In this section, visitors will also come across visitors standing unusually close to the wall – to smell the aforementioned olfactory installation by Sissel Tolaas.

The end of the exhibition is designed to be open, in the literal sense: in a so-called forum, visitors can exchange ideas with each other and with experts during their visit to the exhibition or in event formats. Literature on the topic is on display, and visitors can browse through it or discuss it at a large round table. Another olfactory installation by Sissel Tolaas in the form of several translucent fabric panels hangs at the end of this room; video clips are shown on screens behind them. In this forum, the status quo, solutions and a human-centered future of hospital planning and construction are to be discussed and shaped together, as the museum writes.

The exhibition at the TUM Architecture Museum in the Pinakothek der Moderne runs until January 21, 2024. The Pinakothek is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. except Mondays, and until 8 p.m. on Thursdays.

“The sick house. How architecture helps to heal.”

Architecture Museum of the TUM in the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
July 12, 2023 to January 21, 2024
Curators and curators: Tanja C. Vollmer, Andres Lepik, Lisa Luksch
Curatorial and scientific collaboration: Zeynep Ece Sahin, Friedrich Mönninger
Exhibition architecture: IMS Studio and Friederike Daumiller
Graphic design: strobo B M
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog.

Let’s stay on topic: the winning design in the competition for a new hospital in Liezen also uses the keyword “healing architecture”. More about the design by Franz&Sue with Maurer&Partner here: Liezen lead hospital

The Salon Suisse, the event organized by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia to accompany the Architecture Biennale, seeks to engage with the city of Venice. Read here why this was well received.

The Architecture Biennale is one of the most important events taking place in Venice this year. However, the exhibition is only marginally related to the city itself. The Salon Suisse 2021, the accompanying event organized by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, on the other hand, seeks to engage with the venue. That goes down well.

Ilaria and Savino are a little worried. The two organic farmers from the vegetable island of Sant’Erasmo in the Venice lagoon had expected 60 visitors, maybe 80, but 100! The two operators of “i&s Farm”, the only fully organic farm on Sant’Erasmo, have agreed to organize a picnic with their products for the Salon Suisse 2021 excursion participants. That the boat trip into the lagoon would be so well received. Neither the organizers nor the farmer couple had expected this. But in the end, it was no problem. There is plenty of food and wine and, as it turns out, the question of where to sit is quickly resolved. The sun is shining and anyone who can’t find a chair at the tables simply sits down on the grass. After all, this is a picnic.

Ecological balance at risk

The day excursion organized by Salon Suisse on its second weekend of events in 2021 is entitled “The State of the Lagoon”. Stanislas Zimmermann, professor of architecture from Bern, and Tiberio Scozzafava-Jaeger, spatial planner and one of the most profound experts on the lagoon’s fragile ecosystem, want to demonstrate to participants how versatile, but also how changeable, the waters that surround Venice are.

They explain this to their audience right at the beginning: The lagoon in its existing form is the result of centuries of hydraulic engineering by the Venetians. For a long time, the city’s inhabitants feared that the lagoon, which formed the basis of their security and prosperity, could silt up. As early as the Middle Ages, they therefore began to divert the boulder-rich mountain streams that flowed into the lagoon. The mouth of the Brenta, for example, was relocated several times by the Venetians for this reason. In the 21st century, the lagoon suffers from the exact opposite problem: the openings of the lagoon to the Adriatic have been widened and deepened for the huge cruise ships and the MO.S.E. flood barrier. This has led to a noticeable increase in erosion in the lagoon. This poses a serious threat to the ecological balance.

Lazzaretto Nuovo: the world’s first quarantine station

The “MS Palladio” sets course for Lazzaretto Nuovo. The small island is a special reflection of Venetian history. The extensive salt marshes surrounding the island bear witness to the time of early settlement in the second half of the first millennium AD. Salt was initially the most important product and commodity of the lagoon islands. This was long before today’s Venice was built around the Rialto. An educational trail leads around the island and explains the special features of the local biosystem. Half a millennium later, when the Serenissima had risen to become the most important trading power in the Mediterranean, the island was given a new purpose, which is reflected in its current name.

The world’s first quarantine station was set up here. Every ship that wanted to call at Venice and was suspected of carrying an epidemic into the city first had to head for Lazzaretto Nuovo. The crew and cargo were then isolated here for forty days (quaranta means forty). Of the once extensive facilities, only the large warehouse remains today. Inside, the walls are covered in graffiti. Workers have left behind the texts and drawings that were enclosed there in the 15th and 16th centuries to disinfect ship cargoes. The island, once a place of fear and uncertainty, is now an idyllic spot where few tourists stray. There is no regular service there. The direct transfer to Lazzaretto Nuovo is therefore a rare privilege for excursion participants.

Temporary artist’s apartment in the palazzo

The Salon Suisse had already provided rare insights on the first weekend of the event in September – in this case into the lives of (urban) Venetians. The organizers had put together a tour of five equally typical and different homes in Venice. The tour led from an apartment of barely 20 square meters, which many young professionals can barely afford, to one of the city’s 40,000 Airbnbs. They are one reason why living space is so scarce in Venice. The number of vacation apartments in the city has quadrupled in recent years, as we learned during the tour.

We continued on to Santa Elena, located just behind the cruise port. Over the last few decades, the district has changed from a working-class area to a popular residential area for students and the middle class – because Venice is relatively “un-Venetian” here, interest from tourists and speculators is limited. In the Catholic student residence “Domus Civica” in Sestriere San Polo, students vacate their single and double rooms during the semester break. Their rooms are then rented out to tourists. Last stop: a student apartment in a Venetian palazzo. The Swiss Forberg Foundation makes the magnificent six-room apartment in the Palazzo Castelforte right next to the Scuola Grande di San Rocco available to artists for stays of several months.

On the last weekend of the Salon Suisse 2021 in November, there will be another excursion into the urban space with performance artist Davide-Christelle Sanvee. The focus will be on personal artistic engagement with the city. Even more than on the two previous tours, the Salon Suisse will take the exploration of art and architecture out of the “silo”, the narrowly defined places of culture, and onto the alleyways, squares and canals of Venice.

This article was produced with the kind support of Laufen Bathrooms AG. The company has been the main sponsor of the Salon Suisse of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia since 2012.

Salon Suisse 2021: “Bodily Encounters”

November Salon: “Alterations”

November 18 to 20, 2021

Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi

Campo S. Agnese, Dorsoduro 810

Venice

prohelvetia.ch

Read the interview with Evelyn Steiner, the salonière of this year’s Salon Suisse, here.