Section 05

Measures

The ward was specified before it was drawn: beds per room, distance between them, window area, cubic feet of air per patient. These are the figures that let the plan travel from one country to another without the architects ever meeting.

3 entriesThe rules written down.

An architect's ward-plan drawing laid flat — On a ward plan the beds become marks and the walls become poché — the argument is made in dimensions.Photo: Floor plan of Vaziri Hospital · Wikimedia Commons

Entries in Measures

Notes on Hospitals
Florence Nightingale published the ward as a set of numbers in 1859 — beds per ward, distance between them, window area, cubic feet of air per patient — and hospitals were built to those figures for decades.
Cubic feet per bed
A ventilation standard expressed as volume, and what it did to ceiling heights.
The ward round as a plan
Sightlines from the nurse's position shaped the long open ward as much as air did.

Measures

Notes on Hospitals

Cubic feet per bed

The ward round as a plan