Palliative Pavilion
A pavilion in the park is for patients in the palliative care unit, family members, caregivers and visitors. It creates with the surrounding newly designed space a "beautiful place" with a pleasant atmosphere. Private and public subtly touch. This social project (social design) was designed by students of the Architecture Master's Degree Program at the FH Kärnten (Carinthia University of Applied Sciences) in Spittal as a Design-Build Project 2014 – 2015. It was fully planned and mainly executed through their own work.
Caption:
“The desire to be closer to nature and the desire for privacy improves the situation for patients and visitors”
The regional hospital in Klagenfurt was expanded and remodeled by the architect Dietmar Feichtinger a few years ago after the diversion of the River Glan. The whole site is now open to the public. Paths are not only for visitors, doctors and nurses, but also for anyone who wants to walk there. Our student "Design-Build Project”, realized towards the end of 2015, creates a protected outdoor space for the Association of Palliative Medicine. It is situated in a park area only about 400 metres east from the mental asylum (founded in 1877) where, in the era of National Socialism between 1942 and 1945, euthanasia was practiced and between 700 and 900 people were killed. The small pavilion, embedded in the public park, is located between a covered access way of the integrated pathway network and a short path to the large visitor’s carpark.
A pavilion for palliative care patients
The desire is to create an area of special quality in the open and in the immediate vicinity of the department of supervised patient care. It should be close to the access ways, embedded in nature and greenery, offering privacy but at the same time contact with everyday life processes. This sensitive "touch zone" between the terminally-ill patients and users requires the respect of other users who come perhaps for a short rest - an encounter in one to two short periods of newly forming social space – and requires when necessary the automatic releasing of an occupied space like when an elderly person is left with an easily accessible convenient place in a public transport. The design of the architecture students of CUAS shows a clear, yet sensitively designed solution for this content-challenging social design task.
Images and Plans
Technical Description
Over an approximately eight by eight meters large base space-constraining vertical larch wood slats are raised. They form two flared rooms one an open gazebo facing east, the other covered and opening to the West. Both of these rooms have larch floors and are equipped on their narrow sides with benches. The access area between them is provided with a water-permeable coating, the same as the short access path from the main entrance of the dermatology building and the palliative department.
The partly fanned and partly parallel arrangement of standing untreated larch wood slats and the horizontal pergola timbers creates a protected "interior" which behind the benches is fully closed off and protected against the wind. At the same time however, due to their interspaces, the slats of the pavilion offer a very good view of the surrounding natural environment. The pavilion will be softened by the delicate arrangement of planting areas and enhanced by the growing plants.
Above all, a pleasant atmosphere for patients and relatives as well as other users is provided by the concept and the materials used in the pavilion - and it smells pleasantly of wood.
Evaluation
For our participating students, the entire process of the assignment, from the very detailed planning stages through to personal realization of the woodwork and horticultural design, was immensely important. The dialogue with practical operating physicians, psychologists, nurses from the palliative area, a number of patients, the hospital management and the supervising university teachers produced individual designs which have culminated in the finished structure after the instructive design-build process. Through the different weather and seasonal conditions, various atmospheric effects should develop and be experienced and impact this place in stillness. Perhaps a different meaning and interpretation of a space can emerge that counteracts the aforementioned unpleasant memories.