COVID-19’s Impact on Hospital Designs

Text: Zoltán Schrammel

„The world is sick”, this is what Le Corbusier wrote briefly in 1967 when forming his views on urban design. The eternal truth of this statement would be difficult to refute or question, but there is no doubt it is definitely true as of today, in the spring of 2020. The majority of people follow the course of events isolated whilst self-quarantining in their homes, whilst healthcare bleeding from lots of wounds and at the crossfire of social debates stand in the frontline to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Up-to-date and typically dramatic experiences internationally associated with the handling of the epidemic enforce us now to survey and review every ongoing hospital project to revise and replan our architectural programmes, technical decisions based on the opinions of people working in healthcare at the front of the struggle, the patients infected with the disease, and the managers of healthcare. We are to do so whilst knowing that the corona virus and similar infectants will remain with us forever, and we are to face and get prepared for the repetition of their pandemic spread at any time in the future.