The hospital community connection: methods of interpretation and development

Renaissance cruciform hospitals appeared as primary features of cities and remained as distinct types in the following two centuries, meeting functional needs, but with symbolic meaning. The micro-cosmos and introversion characteristics were maintained in the enlightenment hospitals and they also made an impact on the built fabric of the whole city. After the pavilions of the nineteenth century, the hospitals of the nineteenth century launched technological innovations which had no relationship with their urban context. In the form of vertical or horizontal blocks and even hospital streets, contemporary hospitals, often located in peripheral areas, are conditioned by technical production criteria or by standardisation criteria applied to other collective buildings. Hospitals must recover their role as a primary feature of the urban fabric and abandon their current distance from the discipline of architecture.

Keywords: Hospital; typology; urban context

Epifanio Li Calzi, Il legame ospedale territorio: modalità di lettura ed evoluzione in "TERRITORIO" 55/2010, pp 39-46, DOI: 10.3280/TR2010-055007