Works

Hospital where people are "welcome to drop by anytime"

Fukuyama Hospital has been working on community-based health care in Nishiakashi in Hyogo prefecture since its opening in 1974. Whereas aging of the population in Japan is increasing the need for home care and family doctors, advancement of medical care is causing patients to wish for medical care at large hospitals. The plan for Fukuyama Hospital was made in consideration of "how middle and small hospitals should be in the future" based on the theme of a spatial structure allowing the hospital to have a "closer relationship " with the community, in other words to realize a hospital where people are "welcome to drop by anytime." This hospital, while satisfying the hospital functions, has planned a program that allows people to visit the hospital whether or not they are sick in order to build a "closer relationship" with community residents as a community-based hospital that helps build a bright and prosperous local community. The design concepts are a "symbolic facility near the station," "facility to be developed through people's participation," and "facility designed with communality of space." A new approach to a hospital that supports community-based health care and co-exists with the community was pursued by incorporating into the plan of the new hospital the materialization of an external design, spatial structure centered around the community space, and space that changes from public to private.