The importance of healthcare systems was painfully demonstrated to the world in 2020. Infrastructural weaknesses and run-down hospitals caused the system to collapse in many countries. Since then, there has been an inflationary appearance of studies, documentaries, and exhibitions dealing with disease up to the point of exhaustion. 

“Building to Heal” is a refreshing exception. Highlighting evidence-based correlations between architecture and the healing process, the exhibition is a showcase of global best practices. Based on years of research by co-curator Tanja C. Vollmer and her team, the visitor is guided through a colorful display of the so-called “healing seven:” orientation, odorscape, soundscape, withdrawal and privacy, power points, view and foresight, as well as human scale. Where possible these principles are implemented in the exhibition design resulting in an intuitive layout. 


In three rooms, the exhibition with the gloomy German title “Das Kranke(n)haus” welcomes visitors to look at spaces through the lens of the sick. Meandering through pastel-colored clouds one learns about the surprising importance of factors like orientation in or the sounds of hospitals. Visitors rubbing their noses against a wall or sniffing a curtain are no rare sight: odor installations pose an invitation for interaction and mark each visitor with a recognizable scent one can smell even later on the street.

While many exhibitions at the Architekturmuseum der TUM clearly frame their content for architects, the curating team around Lisa Luksch succeeded in reaching a broader audience. Her debut exhibition stresses the relevance of architecture to the amateur without oversimplifying the content to the architecturally trained. 

Though the opening of the exhibition was impeccably timed—happening on the day of the passage of Germany’s health care reform—the exhibition is much more than a child of the pandemic. Scientifically backed, it surpasses the common use of the buzzword “healing architecture.” Instead, it gives hope that the future of medical infrastructure lies beyond investor-driven construction and educates on how multifaceted the impact of architectural design can be.

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