The issue of locating and planning of a hospital is reduced in principle to ab¬solutely real contingencies, i.e. to the natural conditions of an already existing urban environment. Indeed, this is expressed in the choice of an existing ur¬ban site. In such a way, the processing of the spatial and functional needs and their responding to the posed specifications take seriously into account this fundamental restriction. In short, this presupposed frame of assumptions is shaped in such a way that may be an initial starting point for the further treat¬ing of the whole issue. Another, equally important dimension that is im¬plied to the synthetic process is the adopted attitude towards this sort of ar¬chitec¬ture. Herein major concepts are treated, such as confinement, depriva¬tion, delimitation, disease, care, hospitalization, surgery, anesthesia and finally the ultimate contradiction between life and death. It is attempted that the dra¬matic dimension implied in these concepts should be spatialized up to a point; in other words, to submit the idea of a “bodily purgation” both to pa¬tients and visitors.
Besides, even the therapy for the full healing within hospital substantiates this more or less painful trial. Indeed, either as a treatment or as a surgical operation, it is accompanied more or less by the peculiar and manifold idea of pain. This idea, in conjunction with the continuous efforts of suspending it, forms an opposition that expresses firstly a pal-pable reality within hospital, which acts as a starting point in planning. Consequently, the fact that there is a strong and substantiated conceptual background, favors the creative shaping of a space that is suitable for the destined cause as well as con¬sistent to the conditions and the specifica¬tions which have been initially posed.