Like cities, hospitals reflect life - they usually contain a representative sample of a city's population in terms of socioeconomic status, race, religion, professions and cultures. Hospitals are often divided into departments with various traffic flows connecting them and services to support them. It makes sense, then, when many hospital architects refer to the city as a model and show a desire for their project to have fundamental characteristics of a well designed city, such as the capacity to form a living community with cultural integration.
Lewis Mumford, whose books have had a major impact on town planning and architecture through his books on the culture of cities, describes the way cities are designed as a result of the deliberate choices reflecting a culture's economic, social and moral concepts, adapting to new circumstances. "Fragments of culture continue to live long after the society that originally sustained them has passed away: often long after they have ceased to be a rational response to a situation or the expression of a need." (1) This can be seen in the evolution of a hospital over time. People's choices are influenced by emotional and associative processes, and policy making is not immune to this influence. Thus, hospitals cannot be seen as distinct from their cultural context.
Summarised from:
Wagenaar, Cor. "The Culture of Hospitals." In The Architecture of Hospitals, edited by Cor Wagenaar, 24-25. Rotterdam: NAi Publishing, 2006.
(1) Lewis Mumford, The Culture of Cities (New York, Secker & Warburg, 1944),73.
Mumford, Lewis. The Culture of Cities. London: Secker & Warburg, 1944.
Wagenaar, Cor, ed. The Architecture of Hospitals. Rotterdam: NAi Publishing, 2006.
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