Health and Architecture: The History of Spaces of Healing and Care in the Pre-Modern Era

(Paperback)

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Health and Architecture offers a uniquely global overview of the healthcare facility in the pre-modern era, engaging in a cross-cultural analysis of the architectural response to medical developments and the formation of specialized hospitals as an independent building typology. Whether constructed as part of Chinese palaces in the 15th century or the religious complexes in 16th century Ottoman Istanbul, the healthcare facility throughout history is a built environment intended to promote healing and caring. The essays in this volume address how the relationships between architectural forms associated with healthcare and other buildings in the pre-modern era, such as bathhouses, almshouses, schools and places of worship, reflect changing attitudes towards healing. They explore the impact of medical advances on the design of hospitals across various times and geographies, and examine the historic construction processes and the stylistic connections between places of care and other building types, and their development in urban context. Deploying new methodological, interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to the analysis of healthcare facilities, Health and Architecture demonstrates how the spaces of healthcare themselves offer some of the most powerful and practical articulations of therapy.

Reviews

Health and Architecture synthesizes new scholarship on structures and functions of healing spaces across an impressive geographic range from antiquity to the present. The four themes of religiosity, polity, typology, and design structure the seventeen contributors diverse explorations of healthcare from within homes to hospitals. * Marta Hanson, John Hopkins University, USA *
In the wake of the global pandemic, Health and Architecture offers a collection of timely and far-reaching essays. Valuable for teachers and essential for scholars, this selection of carefully researched articles on architecture and medicine will spark conversations and catalyze research for decades to come. * Carla Yanni, Rutgers University, USA *

Author Bio

Mohammad Gharipour is Professor of Architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning at Morgan State University in Baltimore, USA. His other publications include Social Housing in the Middle East (co-edited with Kivanc Kilinc, 2019), The Historiography of Persian Architecture (2015) and Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in In Poetry, Arts and History (I.B. Tauris, 2013).