Humanizing the Hospital: Design Lessons from a Finnish Sanatorium

As medicine has moved toward evidence-based practice, so too has hospital design, which is increasingly guided by research linking physical environments to health care outcomes through the process of evidence-based design. The Paimio Sanatorium, built in the early 1930s in the southwest portion of Finland and designed by the architect Alvar Aalto, demonstrates an appreciation for good design and the ambition to create healing environments that emulate nature.

Prior to the development of evidence-based design, Alvar Aalto created a healing environment addressing each patient’s psychological and social needs. Just as the starting point in the Paimio Sanatorium design was the individual whose privacy and comfort were of central importance, the current field of evidence-based hospital design emulates this focus of the physical setting as therapeutic.

Read more about the Paimio Sanatorium and the features of its healing environment.