creative process -introduction

Creating Healing Spaces

“The central issue in creating anything is motivation rather than method”

Dr David Reilly

Hospitals were traditionally meant to be places of rest and beauty that would enhance human healing. And yet today even the best hospitals seem designed more for the benefit of the utilitarian theorist than the patient, their families, the carer or the administrator.

Project Director

In 1994, as soon as Dr David Reilly was first appointed to lead the project to replace the old Glasgow Homoeopathic Hospital, he was determined that the new building would be neither ugly nor intimidating.

However, Dr Reilly was not naïve about the challenges ahead. He realised that making a place of healing and beauty could not be achieved by simply hiring a top architect. It would require the motivation and creative collaboration of patients, health carers, architects, artists, administrators, hospital managers, academics, media workers and political leaders.

He therefore set out to put together a Design Team that would be prepared to work together creatively and mobilise the necessary support to ensure that the hospital would meet everyone’s expectations – at no extra cost per square metre than a regular hospital.