In 1921, a courageous, open-minded and socially committed physician carries out her decision to “found a small clinic”. She is Dutch, called Ita Wegman and she transforms anthroposophical thinking into a human-oriented medicine, nursing and pharmacy at the bedside. It is the birth of the Ita Wegman Clinic, today Arlesheim Clinic, in Arlesheim, Switzerland, which offers in-patient cardiology, pneumology, oncology, neurology, psychiatry and psychosomatics, as well as a 24-hour internistic emergency service and a wide range of out-patient care. The clinic is regarded as an international center of excellence in anthroposophic medicine and of inpatient and outpatient anthroposophic oncology. Almost 100 years later, in 2018, the Dutch architectural office Kopvol, together with the Swiss planning office Metron, wins the architectural competition for the new clinic building. The design by ARGE Metron – Kopvol is characterized by a precise relationship between inside and outside and a vertical structure that follows a consistent architectural-psychological concept. Anthroposophical requirements and new scientific findings thus combine to form a building that defines the identity of the new clinic in Arlesheim: The strong roots of a hundred year old hospital with the courage to enter a new holistic medical era.
The inclined patient room, the clustered therapy areas and the phonetically gradual division of the staircase follow Kopvol’s typical evidence-based and spatial-anthropo-dysmorphic design strategies. On the future Arlesheim campus, the new hospital will combine two core competencies: a. Research/Care and b. Therapy/Cure. The ‘Research/Care’ competence includes a restaurant and a conference center on the parking level (floor -1); Villa Hirslandweg, which is intended as a guest house for international scientists or as a clinical-therapeutic research institute; the tree nursery with vegetable garden and the medical laboratory at Pfeffingerhof. The restaurant and conference center will have its own entrance opposite the Lukas-Klinik and will be open to the public without mixing the flow of visitors with the activities of the clinic. The therapy garden of Haus Lukas will be connected to the therapy garden of Haus Ita Wegman via a direct connecting axis through the new clinic, so that the competence ” Therapy/Cure” can develop naturally.
Section of patient room