Colour plays key role in Lugo Hospital

For the renovation of the corridors of wing B of the hospital in the town of Lugo in northeast Italy, colour was used as a building block for the design of space. Most specifically, Feel collection porcelain tiles from Caesar were chosen to counteract the unfriendly, impersonal atmosphere of the hospital environment.
Colour is a language of communication that aids orientation and helps improve the quality of a service. This is particularly true of hospitals, where patients undergo lengthy medical procedures that frequently involve a lot of time spent waiting. The effective use of colour helps improve environmental quality and humanise hospitals, which is important given the state of mental and physical fragility often experienced by patients. The use of a corrective colour scheme brings therapeutic benefits and may assist and speed up patients’ return to health as well as being a valuable aid against depression and anxiety, helping to shift their attention away from their illness and interior discomfort. Psychological studies have shown that effective use of colour can also improve the motivation and friendliness of healthcare personnel.
The ribbed effect of the tile surface helps to enhance the sensation of warmth and familiarity. The breadth of the range and the extensive collection of decorative elements and colour options are designed to meet this project requirement. The Feel collection features delicate, ton-sur-ton patterns, while the fact that the tiles are single-calibre, squared and rectified makes them extremely easy to install.
A large rectangular 30×60 cm size was chosen for the floor covering in the corridors, where the two colours Colonial and Mida alternate in an irregular fashion to create a pleasant and reassuring sense of movement and a lively colour contrast with the yellow walls.
The Lugo hospital project is an outstanding example of a cultural approach that can be defined as « Design for All ». It is a design model that takes account of construction standards while pushing back horizons beyond mere application of legal criteria, combining technical aspects dictated by legislation with more general considerations of the quality of the architectural project and standard of living. In order to design user-friendly places that promote ease of orientation and use and enhance freedom, it is necessary to listen to the many players extraneous to the design process and to consider that the life of a building only really begins when it is put into service.
The project for the Lugo hospital focuses on innovative design solutions aimed at the five senses, achieving a final perceptive result, a kind of « sensorial artefact » in which the elements of ceramic material and colour are designed and organised in such a way as to stimulate the functions of the senses.