Now & Then: The Land’s (New) Hospital

From neoclassical architecture to classical Icelandic problems

The older picture is of the oldest building of Landspítalinn, The National University Hospital of Iceland, located by Hringbraut in 101 Reykjavík. The featured picture dates back to 1954, some 25 years after the building was completed.  It was the first building of the complex that today accommodates the hospital — in fact, it stood alone until the 1960s.

It is thought to be one of the best works of then-state architect Guðjón Samúelsson, whose buildings include Hallgrímskirkja, The University of Iceland, The National Theatre, and almost every other prominent nation-building type of structure Iceland has. The cornerstone of the building was laid down in 1926 by the last queen of Iceland, Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and, as with so many other things we link to progress in the 20th century, it was Icelandic women who lobbied — and gathered funds — for the hospital to be built.

The old hospital has been ridden with mould issues in the last few years and is, along with the labyrinth-style buildings it is by now surrounded by, outdated for its purposes. In 2018 work began on a new hospital building on the premises just in front of the old building. The task at hand is the biggest infrastructure project in the history of Iceland, and potentially the most expensive one, with the cost currently estimated at 200 billion ISK. Just like other such national infrastructure projects lately, the cost has exceeded all plans, and other problems have mounted during construction. To name a few, aside from the ever-expanding cost, are the fact that the placement of the hospital is neither central to modern Reykjavík, nor likely to do anything but add fuel to the fire that is the current traffic jam that is Reykjavík, as Landspítalinn will also be the country’s most populous workplace. Second is the fact that currently it is undecided where, how and if a helipad will be located on or near the building, and lastly, partly because of a massive population increase in the last decade, it is likely that when the hospital opens up in 2030, it will already be too small to properly service the country.

Be that as it may, it will still be better than what we have already, unless  — of course — the helipad problem won’t be solved, in which case the new hospital will actually be worse in servicing emergencies from outside of Reykjavík than the current setup. This is ironic since it is located next to the city airport, which is still there, in order to make sure that medical emergencies from outside of Reykjavík can be flown in as close to the island’s main hospital as possible.