'Why has the hospital ceased to be one of the most gratifying architectural assignments?' asks architectural historian Cor Wagenaar rnin the recently published book, The Architecture of Hospitals (The Berlage Institute, 2006). Wagenaar describes the evolution of hospital architecture as being 'punctuated by beautiful examples'but also by'built catastrophes, anonymous institutional complexes'. The answer to this question, Wagenaar states, may be found in the exploration of two approaches or attitudes: architecture as a critical discipline and architecture as a body of knowledge - the historical approach. Yet these two approaches are surely intertwined and interdependent.
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