Sustainability in Hospital Planning and Design – Analysis of the built environment and future potentials

Starting point: In the 1960s till 1970s german hospital buildings were built as efficient, functional and rational as possible. Basic requirements such as daylight or the comfort of patient rooms receded into the background. Nowadays, hospital buildings are still technically demanding and complex facilities that must be flexible regarding the continuous improvements and further developments of medical technologies. However, the focus is on human beings and their needs. Design qualities are gaining in importance so that a visionary and efficient planning becomes more and more important for the sustainability of hospitals (cf. Nickl, 2015). Problem definition: Hospital architecture presents a challenge in planning because process-oriented structures and medical technologies at a high-level need to be combined with a health-promoting environment and atmosphere. During the planning phase, various changes in the requirements consistently affect the planning process. The process of hospital planning is changing from a stringent procedure to a more iterative and dynamic process so that the requirement for the development and planning of hospitals become more complex (cf. Gerber, 2011; Wiesinger, 2014). State of research: The planning of healthcare buildings is of high interest for politics, the economy and, the society. According to my research, there are various of scientific publications which deal with this topic in Germany as well as on an international level e.g. McKee, M. and Healy, J. (2002): Hospitals in a changing Europe and Roth, C., Dombrowski, U., Fisch, M. N. ed. (2015): Zukunft. Klinik. Bau.Objective: A sustainable hospital building can be characterized by hard facts, such as functional floor area or process-oriented indicators, and soft facts e.g. sustainability or design aspects of healing architecture. The objective of this research is to analyze the different key figures of hard and soft facts that nowadays affect hospital architecture and design. Afterwards, the results can be used as a tool for a more standardized and efficient planning in healthcare architecture.Methodology: Literature study, structural analysis of hospitals in Germany, interviews with planners and users e.g. hospital managers, chief physicians, nursing staff, and patients.