On 31 May, Agnes van den Berg, Professor of Nature Experience and Landscape at the University of Groningen, will be in conversation with Matthias Rottmann, architect and partner at De Zwarte Hond architectural firm.
Increasing attention is being given to placing hospitals and healthcare facilities within a more natural context, both as a transition from the urban to the rural environment and through the assimilation of nature in their architecture. De Zwarte Hond, together with Zuyderland in Sittard, has launched a new care concept in which the patient and the individual healing process are central. By starting with increasing the patient’s freedom of choice, the patient’s concerns are prioritised over those of the doctors and insurance companies.
The hospital acquires a universal appearance, and the traditionally complicated layout is redesigned in such a way that the logistics also have a beneficial effect. Nature also plays an important role.
During this lecture, organised as part of the exhibition Intensive Care: Architecture and Design in Healthcare, we shall study the roles of nature and architecture in the healing process.
Agnes van den Berg
Agnes van den Berg studies individual differences in the valuation of wild and cultivated nature. As an environmental psychologist, she began working in Wageningen in 1997, after which she held various positions at the Alterra research institute and worked on a number of research projects in the field of experiencing nature and the relationship between nature and health. She is currently Professor of Nature Experience at the University of Groningen’s Department of Cultural Geography, a chair funded by the Dutch National Fund for Green Investments, and she has her own research agency, Natuurvoormensen.
Matthias Rottmann
Matthias Rottmann, together with Henk Stadens, leads De Zwarte Hond’s office in Cologne. Rottmann’s expertise is in large-scale (infrastructure) projects and urban planning transformation tasks. Alongside contributing to the architectural debate, he also publishes and is a guest lecturer and critic at various architecture institutions in the Netherlands and Germany.
Date: Wednesday 31 May, 20:00–22:00
Language: Dutch
Admission: free
Location: Bureau Europa