Barcelona - Sant Pau Hospital - Colour that Heals
Welcome to my new blog! I am so excited to be sharing my adventures and love of colour, architecture, design, and travel with you.
My most recent trip to Barcelona seems like the perfect place to start. This is the city where I first fell in love with architecture 10 years ago. It was my first trip to Europe and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of things to explore. It’s a city filled with colour and culture and even during my third visit here I was amazed by all of the incredible new places I discovered and things I learned. In this first part of my Barcelona recap I have a couple colourful treats I can’t wait to share with you.
The Sant Pau Hospital is a building that I visited for the first time during this trip. This project is a beautiful reinterpretation of the way that hospitals are built. The focus, by architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner, to bring natural light and air to each and every patient was groundbreaking during this time. The hospital was designed as a series of pavilions that were meant to allow for lots of natural light to each patient and to also help to prevent the spread of disease during an outbreak. There is a social equity to this design that is very interesting and the design was conceived in a way that intended for the architecture to facilitate healing.
What was particularly interesting to me was the way that the architect has used color theory.As I furthered explored the hospital evidence of strategic placement of color seemed to appear more and more. As you enter the hospital through the administration pavilion the grand entry is covered in soft pink tiles. Imagine being sick and worried, uncertain of what illness you have or what your prognosis might be. In color theory this light pink is thought to be calming. A similar shade was used for several years in many prisons to try and keep inmates calm.
After being admitted you would be taken into the tunnels that run underground connecting each of the pavilions which are covered in white tile. The large light wells and the white tiles keep them as bright as possible and also reinforce the idea of a clean, sanitary facility. You are then brought into the appropriate pavilion covered in green tiles with grand ceilings and a sunroom on the corner giving you views to the lush gardens outdoors and access to natural sunlight to help you heal. The green is believed to be a healing color and gave the illusion of the outdoors for patients who were unable to move to the sunroom.
The areas of the hospital for doctors and administrators are all colored in yellows and oranges. These colours could have represented a few different things. Yellow and orange are most closely associated with gold, this would reinforce the status and importance of the work that everyone at the hospital was doing. These two colors are also known to be energizing which would be very important for doctors who are likely working long hours.
Have you been the The Sant Pau Hospital? What are your favourite spots to visit in the city? I would love to hear from you and if you have any suggestions of colorful places I should check out let me know in the comments!