Northwich Park Hospital was among the first hospitals designed for expansion. (Photo courtesy London Northwest Healthcare Trust)
TEXT Peter Sealy
Last fall, a colloquium in Montreal entitled Hospital / Hôpital examined the hospital?s importance as a political, cultural and architectural artefact. From the labour strife behind the creation of Modernist hospitals in West Virginia to the historic ties between the Sainte-Justine children?s hospital and Montreal?s working-class francophone community, 19 presentations sketched out the many links between hospitals and the communities they serve. A particular highlight was the screening of Robert Cordier?s film Miracles in Modern Medicine. Created for Arthur Erickson?s Man and His Health pavilion at Expo 67, the film shows six interventions involving humans and machines at Montreal hospitals. It was recently rediscovered by Stephen Palmer of the University of Windsor; both Cordier and Palmer were on hand to present this glorious example of high-tech medicine as popular entertainment. Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center in Brooklyn was also an early example of a hospital designed to accommodate changing technology. (Image: Bruce Wood)
While several presenters explored the interplay between changing medical technology and hospital design, McGill Assistant Professor David Theodore, MRAIC, went one step further by asking: what happens when the hospital not only has to respond to the present state of medical practice, but to its ...