Silvia Gmür Reto Gmür Architekten — Un hôpital est une maison d’homme — La Galerie d’Architecture — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: December 5, 2014 → January 10, 2015

« 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