Reporting From the Front

Dated April 22, 2020, a letter written by Office of Metropolitan Architecture partner Reinier de Graaf takes the form of a message from the future to the present reflecting on the inadequacies of the healthcare system exposed by COVID-19. “The hospital director became manager. The doctors became staff. The patient became client,” de Graaf writes. He goes on: “Hotels became hospitals. Schools became hospitals. Sports stadia became hospitals. Exhibition and congress centres became hospitals.” In closing, he recounts the perceived failings of governments, entrepreneurs, and vaccine development, concluding that the only possible solution is to redesign the physical form of the hospital.

The future is here, and so is de Graaf’s answer to the failings of medical infrastructure. In April of this year, the firm released a video unveiling a client-commissioned project: the Al Dayaan Health District, a prototype for an autonomous hospital of the future developed for Qatar.

During the intro, a deep-voiced narrator worries that purpose-built hospitals are quickly becoming obsole…