Architecture of health and charity

This social function was expressed through new functional buildings and hospitals that took account of the advancement of scientific knowledge about health as well as formal technical innovations due to the rationalist movement. Several waves of building healthcare establishments continued the impetus generated by miasma theories (airborne contagion) at the end of the Age of Enlightenment.

Initiatives came from the State (Imperial Asylum of Vincennes), municipalities (Trousseau hospital, in Paris), or private patrons demonstrating charity, like the Furtado-Heine dispensary built in Paris by Paul Blondel. The hospital became a subject studied in architecture schools, as Hector Guimard’s drawings for a small hospice show, along with those by Maurice Boille for a sanatorium.