A hospital is the site of some of our best and worst experiences, the site of death and birth, healing and loss. Of all public buildings, they should be the ones that are built with the greatest care and imagination.

Upon arrival in our outpatients, each patient is issued with a large and accommodating pillow. When it’s time for your appointment, your pillow bleeps; as you leave, hand it back to be laundered.

Design in pleasurable slack space. This table is big enough for 30, wired up for patients and an archive of past activities that had occurred here. A member of staff can re-run the appointment you have just had.

What if some parts of hospitals were public spaces with quite different uses – botanical gardens, galleries, performance spaces, sports facilities, libraries, museums, research facilities, spaces to display existing museum collections, educational facilities, or even Olympic training facilities? How different might things be then? Each could bring with it additional funding recognising that hospitals are full of the diverse audiences that other public institutions seek.

‘Ask Clive’, a film with Clive Barnett in the Royal Free Hospital can be viewed here.

Streaming video:  56k modem  |  Broadband

Transcript of the video  |  PDF

The latest QuickTime plug-in will be needed and is available for download here
Alternatively the streaming video can be viewed at www.rosettalife.org