DEUTSCHLAND­FUNK CULTURE

Bed terminals, dreary views, confinement: anyone who is admitted to hospital often finds oneself in a depressing environment. That affects the healing process, knows architecture psychologist Tanja C. Vollmer. In an interview with Ute Welty from Deutschlandfunk Kultur, she talks about her expertise and visions. An excerpt: “Welty: In Corona times, as you have just mentioned, quite a number of emergency hospitals were planned, built and then dismantled. To what extent can we use the opportunity now to do more than just accommodate beds? Vollmer: Yes, it would be a wonderful opportunity if we could learn from it now also with regard to the hospital environment. We have known for a long time that hospitals as we have now will eventually become obsolete. These are immobile giants, enormous machines in which patients feel lost anyway, according to all the stories we repeatedly collect, and create something that we call decentralized hospitals, i.e. several small emergency wards where you can be treated quickly, and then real care units that have to get completely different atmospheres, a sort of sanctuary, which we might know from antiquity, from the past. (…)“