Designing New Hospital With Legos

Doctors and nurses have been taking part in designing a proposed new hospital – and using Lego bricks to create a prototype.

RÚV reports some 40 employees of The National University Hospital of Iceland have, for the past few days now, put themselves in the position of architects as they use Lego blocks to design the new emergency services centre that will be built at Hringbraut in Reykjavík.

“The employees have gotten the opportunity to look at things in a new way,” architect Ólafur Hersisson, who is amongst the people working to design the new hospital, told reporters. “Now we’re at the point of perfecting the hospital’s design, and it’s important to do it right.”

The approach the intrepid architects are taking is to consider what would be best for the patient. By using a design based on the ideas of the people who work there, the hope is that the new hospital will be able to offer better service for less money than a hospital designed by those more removed from the workplace.

Some of the tentative designs for the new hospital, in slightly more fleshed-out form, can be seen at the website of the new hospital.