Abstract
'White Elephants' is how conventional post-war hospitals were critically qualified in the 1960s. Critics lamented that the idea of the hospital as a healing environment had been replaced by that of a 'cleansing machine', echoing post-war modernist ideals of hygiene, rational management, efficiency, and mechanical production. As a reaction, architects and interior architects (together with commissioners and medical specialists) took initiatives to 'humanise' the hospital. It resulted in innovative interior and architectural concepts that engaged with the psychological, symbolic and social dimensions of hospital environments. In this research a connection is made between the past and the present of Belgian hospital buildings designed and developed with a human-centred vision in the period of the 1960s-1980s, resulting in a twofold aim. The aim of the project is to read - document and analyse - the architectural and interior concepts and to reread - gain profound insight into - present day uses and experiences of these buildings by patients, visitors and staff to discuss their value for contemporary hospital design. By combining a historic and an ethnographic analysis of both Flemish, Brussels and Walloon cases, the research will a) highlight this innovative period in Belgian architectural history; b) document and analyse the architectural and interior concepts developed in the past and c) discuss the value of these concepts for contemporary hospital design.
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