COURSE DESCRIPTION

SUMMER  SCHOOL "Hospital + the City" 2023

An interdisciplinary approach to hospital planning in the urban context

Berlin boasts one of the world’s most extensive and prestigious health care systems. Like all health care systems, it faces major challenges: the quality of some of the services it offers is below standard, the spatial distribution of its facilities leaves a lot to be desired, overall, the system is too big and, in the long run, financially unsustainable. 

At the top of the system, the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin not only offers the most advanced medical therapies, it is also a renowned centre of scientific research as well as a teaching facility. Its history goes back to the eighteenth century and is today distributed on three large-scale campuses who are facing profound reconstructions in the coming years: the historical campus of Mitte with a series of beautiful neo-gothic pavilions, the campus Virchow in Berlin-Wedding (built in 1906 as Berlin’s last pavilion hospital), and the campus Benjamin Franklin in Berlin-Steglitz, construction of which began in 1959 and lasted until 1969, resulting in an architecturally interesting variant of the then popular Breitfuß type. Located in or near the inner city, the three campuses are large-scale, relatively secluded complexes, they need to open up to their urban surroundings and integrate the public around them and give an incentive to explore or pass through its sites

The main topic of the Summer School is to redefine the Charité and its campuses as part of an urban, sustainable, and health-promoting health care system with special focus on following objectives: 

/ Continuum of Care – Integration into the local health care landscape

/ Innovation Hub – Synergies with companies, research institutes and start-ups

/ Open Campus – Synergies between the hospital and its neighbourhood

/ Health-promoting environments – Planning with a focus on climate-resilience, promotion of health and wellbeing, and user-centred design

In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the future challenges of a university campus and its structural positioning in the city, the participants will hear lectures and seminars from experts from the fields of architecture, urban planning, public health, and health care management.

In an introduction by the Charité building department and on a guided tour, you will explore the Charité campus Mitte, its buildings and planned construction projects.

Excursions in Berlin will give insights into the capital’s urban and health care landscape.

Participants will be asked to work in mixed groups of three to four people to develop their own approaches to the topic outlined above.

The results will be presented in the form of group portfolios on the last day and discussed by invited experts.

At the summer school you will have the opportunity to meet top-class experts and learn about Europe’s biggest university medical clinic. At the same time, we want to promote international and interdisciplinary exchange and hope to strengthen long-term acquaintances and possibly future professional networks. Therefore, we start and end the week with a social event - e.g. a boat trip, pick-nick or dinner.

The summer school takes place at the collaboration space “Fenster der Wissenschaften” on the Campus Charité Mitte in the city centre of Berlin.