The Psychogeography of the Hospital

Old vs new: a defence of the derelict

The foyer was like the entrance to a 1980s train station, with a dizzyingly tall void and enormous escalator running down the centre that was flanked on either side by a newsagency and cafe selling day-old muffins. Up the escalator and we arrive at a crossroads. Turning left, we pass the Plastic Surgery offices: dark, labyrinthine, windowless. Outside the office hung an academic poster detailing a particularly nasty case of a facial degloving, next to a patch of peeling paint. The gruesome imagery was displayed for all to see (including the public) for at least the entire duration of my education. Further on down the corridor, heels clacking on the beaten linoleum, we arrive at the nexus of a cruciate arrangement of buildings. We have now passed into our third era of construction, all characterised by slight variations in the colours of the walls and ceilings, subtle differences in airflow and even their own unique acoustics. In this busy nexus, far too small for the foot traffic it accommodates, sits a set of elevators with an impatient queue of staff, visitors and the odd patient being wheeled off for a scan by an orderly. Opposite the elevators: a small toilet block - one in which I spent much of my university days. Travelling north, east, or west we have the option of traversing any of the so-named N, E, or W wards, identical in appearance whether you are on the second or the eighth floor. On any of these wards, pierced by a central corridor just wide enough to push a hospital bed down, we walk past the single patient rooms (for those lucky enough to contract C diff during their hospital stay), as well as the two-bay and four-bay rooms, paper-thin curtains dividing cubicles making elbow-knocking and food tray-toppling almost inevitable as you make your morning rounds. Nursing stations: a dimly lit game of Twister for the interloper to navigate the tomes of clinical information (in a pre-EMR age), drug cabinets, and general professional feuding (‘excuse me, the sticky note clearly says this is my computer’). In any direction, the hospital can be found sprawling its limbs, traversing time periods and building standards. Ghostly, underutilised sections from a time before penicillin stand next to other, busier parts - Shibuya Crossings of human pain, misery, fear and hope.