Afflicted Form: A History of the Hospital

摘要

In 1975, architect Bertrand Goldberg, a paragon of late American modernism, completed construction of his newest tower in downtown Chicago. Best known at the time for his rounded residential buildings, Goldberg's new task was to design a patient tower for Northwestern Memorial Hospital. It was christened Prentice Women's Hospital. Architecturally, Prentice was Goldberg's most innovative experiment in the curvilinear plans that would dominate his later institutional work. The tower, made from poured concrete, was clover-shaped; its geometry allowed four column-less leaves to cantilever from a single stem-the leaves held the patient rooms and the stem housed the elevator.