ABSTRACT
The chapter suggests that the Renaissance architect-theorists were driven to enforce categories of gender difference in defining the parameters of women's space in the general hospital. Architectural plans for the ideal hospital designated separate areas for men and women, even as they intersected with other categories of difference such as age, social status and degrees of infirmity. The architecture of 'enclosure' and of 'serial space' parallels the organization of the hospital with the result that 'prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons'. In 1484, a drawing of the Milan hospital was commissioned from the young Bramante by the Venetian Republic. As the texts of Alberti and Filarete suggest, the architecture of the hospital was one of both containment and display. Renaissance architects adopted various styles, approaches and even goals for hospitals, but their plans advanced the prerequisite of gendered space for communal order.
