Description

Instead of an extension with budget-friendly standard rooms and a single bathroom per room, Lauf Hospital and their architects elected to design a new edition of the original layout with two wet cells per room. Building on a tried and tested solution from the past, the new design provides added comfort for patients in two-bed rooms and offers potential as a model for better hygiene.

Lauf District Hospital was built in the 1960s and 1970s and has been extended and converted several times over the years. Trend forecasts for the sector, however, pointed to the need for a longer-term plan for a flexible operational model.

The original design concept for the district hospital already served as a solid typological basis: a main corridor runs from east to west and acts as the functional backbone with a bed block facing south. This structural arrangement presented a number of qualities that the extension was able to build on.

Alongside additions and improvements to the existing facilities, the construction project encompassed the addition of two new standard care wards with 32 beds each and a three-bed extension to the intensive care unit. The new three-storey wing was built as a compact block at the rear, northern edge of the hospital and the western patio building was extended. The new building has two wards on the first and second floors, with administrative facilities above, while a connecting section links the new facilities to the existing building. On the upper floors, the wards connect at both ends to the existing hospital creating a circulation ring that makes it possible for several nursing wards to be flexibly organised on one level.

To ensure a uniform room standard across the entire hospital, the design team adopted the basic room floor plan of the existing patio building and adapted it to modern requirements. The hospital’s existing patient rooms have two wet cells per room, and the new ward block continues this pattern with a wet cell per patient located to the left and right of the entrance to the two-bed rooms. Showers for all patients are located on the ward corridors. The new arrangement sacrifices a shower in the room in favour of a separate bathroom (toilet and washbasin) for each patient. In the single-bed rooms, the second cell contains a shower room. For maximum safety and hygiene, the bathrooms are fitted with slip-resistant floor tiles and additional grips and handrails.

The patient rooms have the same generous glazing as the existing building and look out over the surrounding landscape. Each window is set into a deep wooden surround that frames the view and serves as a window seat at sill level. Wood is also used for the bed headwalls and integral patient cupboards to add a more homely feel. Made of chipboard and faced with HPL, they are easy to wipe clean.

The interior design eschews cold metallic materials in favour of wooden surfaces and warm, earthy yellow and orange colour highlights, for example in the curtains, upholstery, coloured wall surfaces and bathroom tiles. Contrasting dark grey frames are used to mark room and door entrances, providing orientation in the rooms and ward corridors.

---

Originally published in: Wolfgang Sunder, Julia Moellmann, Oliver Zeise, Lukas Adrian Jurk, The Patient Room, Birkhäuser, 2020.