Interni magazine presented the fourth webinar of Cersaie's Café della Stampa series of meetings. Gilda Bojardi, director of Interni, introduced the intervention of the architect Filippo Taidelli

On 22 October Filippo Taidelli, founder of the FTA studio, and Gilda Bojardi, director of Interni, talked about the theme of therapeutic beauty at the Café della Stampa, a weekly Cersaie event.

An hour of conversation that touched on several points. Starting with the reason why Taidelli and Bojardi have chosen to talk about aesthetic and typological quality in the spaces intended for care. They started from an experience that the Milanese architect had in April 2018 on the occasion of the FuoriSalone when he participated in the exhibition curated by Interni at the University of Milan with the installation Cells, a reflection project in which they experimented with the therapeutic qualities of synaesthetic elements such as light and sound inside two simulated cells made of glass and paved with self-sanitizing ceramic material.

The experience, which began as a research work, led Taidelli towards concrete projects and an important collaboration with Humanitas which resulted in the recent pilot project Emergency Hospital 19. Through a succession of comparative images between significant viruses of the past century (Spanish and Asiatic) and the current Covid-19 and a series of completed and ongoing projects, Taidelli told his philosophy of thought on what must be the ideal place for the care of sick people. Specifically, he listed a sort of decalogue.


“We must try to eliminate or reduce the need to go to hospital with preventive care and dehospitalization. Give preference to few, efficient and new structures designed for customized and contemporary needs in order to guarantee savings for the health system compared to costly renovations of dilapidated buildings. It would then be useful to replace the departments divided by specialty with areas created taking into account the complexity and duration of assistance, with nearby medical offices, to facilitate the exchange between doctors and to respond promptly to the specific needs of the patient.

The importance of fast track routes should also be emphasized, to avoid inefficiencies: there must not be more than 100 halves between hospitalization and operating room, in order to avoid excessive vertical development which causes obstacles with stretchers, favoring the development of routes in horizontal. I also consider the 'hospital mall' project to be fundamental: more and more extroverted, permeable to new functions and ways of use that brings relatives (external life) close to the sick. In this way the hospital is transformed into a small village with a variety of services from laundries to gyms, with restaurants and shops. For patients it is essential to provide single rooms, with the possibility of hosting a relative: for the patient's well-being and to reduce the possibility of infections. Furthermore, the usefulness of greenery and natural light as therapeutic elements should not be forgotten. There are also other disciplines that can help people during their hospital stay. I refer to art therapy, for example.

To the final question about what the hospital of the future will be like, Taidelli replied: “If I have to imagine it, I am thinking of a building with a maximum of three floors, made of beautiful materials but also very hygienic as the new ceramic products are today, green and full of windows, with a large hotel reception, colored walls and site-specific art installations. Single rooms with bathroom and sleeping and living area able to accommodate relatives without time restrictions. The hospital must regain dialogue with the city, saying no to alienation must return to the civic center. A consideration that applies to all those buildings removed from urban life for reasons that are often more speculative than common sense.