ABSTRACT
Architectural writing is centred on the notion that architecture is the embodiment of an idea and that building or planned environments become statements. Markus and Cameron claim that statements embodied by buildings are answers to questions asked within prior texts. Hospitals are the buildings of extremes extreme efficiency, extreme power, extreme emotion and extreme vulnerability. The questions embodied in hospital buildings of the past assume a hierarchal classification of the needs of patients and preclude the inclusion of dying patients as core users of the building. Thus, the design of both hospitals and hospices can be read as statements made about healthcare philosophy and about attitudes to health and, ultimately, to death. This chapter illustrates a wide variety of architectural plan types, and tours hospital buildings room by room, discussing specific requirements for each space. The general exclusion of family within the typical mid-twentieth-century hospital building was reflected in the hospital system.
