A MUCH-NEEDED AFFIRMATION
Richard Cork
Most people who enter a modern hospital are bound to feel
apprehensive, or even downright frightened by the clinical
institution confronting them. The prospect of undergoing
prolonged treatment is daunting, and the sheer immensity of
the building adds to their trepidation. Even if they are visiting a
patient rather than submitting themselves to medical care,
their anxiety about the illness suffered by a beloved relative or
friend is very likely to fill them with alarm.
What a relief, then, to discover that The New QEII Hospital,
created at the heart of Welwyn Garden City, is designed in such
an inviting manner. Far from rearing up to a formidable height
and making us recoil from its impersonal grimness, this
enlightened centre embodies a spirit of warmth. The architects
have ensured that a sheltering colonnade embraces everyone
walking towards the hospital’s entrance. In front of us, and
above our heads as well, glowing timbers immediately make
even the most nervous visitors feel reassured. This ample wood
cladding exudes the idea of protection.
The enamel panels proposed by Richard Wentworth add to
the sense of welcome. Rather than alienating the onlooker with
bureaucratic instructions, the minimal forms on these plaques
encourage us to become involved with the hospital as an allembracing experience. Although modest in size, their impact is
instantaneous. Wentworth chose enamel as his principal
medium because its sheen makes the panels stand out at once.
They shine in the light, and their brightness counteracts any
gloom which may assail the hospital visitor.
Matching the boldness of traditional heraldic designs,
Wentworth offers minimal and evocative forms guaranteed to
arrest our attention. Because their fixings are invisible, the
plaques all appear to float in space. This enhances the notion of
a journey, and their resemblance to steps immediately places in
our minds the idea of ascending. Although real steps must be
climbed, Wentworth’s offer no such ordeal. They stimulate our
imagination rather than confronting us with a physical trial. The
more we look at them, the more they make us feel at home in
our new surroundings. They let us travel up the wall, across the
ceiling and down again. The experience is liberating. It provides
a much-needed alternative to the gruesome reality of feeling
enclosed by an oppressive institution. Wentworth implies that
the architecture here is positive, even pleasurable. Before we
have entered this new hospital, its clear commitment to
engaging and freeing the visitor encourages us to cast off our
gloom.
Once inside, visitors will discover that other artists have also
made inventive contributions to this crucial spirit of well-being.
David Tremlett, whose ability to enhance a building’s interior is
relished by many at Tate Britain, proves an ideal choice. His
wall decorations bring delight to visitors inside the Tate’s
Manton Hall, where the main staircase is enlivened with a
sequence of buoyant forms and exuberant colours. Like
Wentworth, who grew up in Sawbridgeworth, Tremlett is a
Hertfordshire man: he lives only a few miles from the Welwyn
hospital. And he also shares Wentworth’s fascination with
responding to the challenge of architectural spaces.
As in the Tate staircase, Tremlett adopts a playful attitude to
hospital’s walls and transforms them with a dynamic array of
circles and rhomboids. Although they contain references to
floor-layers, these hieroglyphic shapes have an abstract life of
their own. The colours favoured by Tremlett add to this overall
sense of vivacity, and make us realise that his work is in a direct
line of descent from Matisse’s joyful cut-outs, created near the
end of his life by an ailing and often bed-ridden master. Matisse
knew how to defy illness by focusing on a celebratory vision of
the world; and Tremlett, in his own freewheeling way, is
equally affirmative.
The importance of such art-works within a hospital cannot be
over-estimated. They make an enormous difference, and this
positive mood is sustained by Charlotte Mann’s window
screens and privacy vinyls. Inspired by real net curtains which
she drew elsewhere in Welwyn Garden City, her screens exude
a spirit of dancing energy. Doors open behind them to ventilate
the building, and Mann ensures that her patterns possess a
similar ability to refresh us and blow away our anguish. She
shares, with Tremlett and Wentworth, an understanding that
art is able to humanise a hospital, infusing an impersonal
environment with a much-needed affirmation. Art can speak to
us with enviable directness, and hospitals fully deserve to
become a special focus for its power.