Construção e Espaço como ferramenta de cura: Aplicação da lógica higienistaem modelos de enfermarias

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the evolution of the ward as a fundamental space in clinical practice, characterizing it as a device of medical experimentation where conceptions of disease, healing, and the body materialize within the built environment. The investigation concentrates particularly on the late XVIII and XIX centuries, regarded as crucial periods for the consolidation of hygienist thought. The configurations of these models emphasize constant air renewal, optimized solar exposure, and the use of washable materials as essential elements, whose proportions and spatial arrangements reflect progressive technical refinement. The work explores the relationship between medicine and architectural design through critical analysis of essays, treatises, and documents produced mainly by physicians and hygienists, whose often scattered textual production is reconstructed through a consistent graphic language in order to clarify complex spatial models. The study develops an international panorama that shows how hygienist paradigms were transmitted, adapted, and implemented in different European contexts, especially in Portugal, reflecting medical and architectural exchanges. The narrative traces the transition from the traditional monoblock hospital to pavilionbased schemes, including ephemeral campaign wards created in military and emergency contexts. It reveals how these temporary solutions acted as practical laboratories of experimentation, influencing the consolidation of permanent construction standards and emphasizing the relationship between space, technology, and bacteriological control. In addition to mapping the development of proportion, materiality, and functional organization, the research identifies the ward as a point of convergence between empirical knowledge and design innovation, revealing a complex and dynamic disciplinary field. From this perspective, the dissertation seeks to contribute to the historiography of hospital architecture by proposing a renewed reading that highlights the role of designed space in the optimization of therapeutic environments.