Viljandi’s new hospital and health centre

The architectural solution and smart planning of a hospital undoubtedly play a very important role in saving patients’ lives and ensuring that their treatment is a success. As such, Viljandi Hospital has launched a competition to find the best team to face the many and varied challenges – some of them rarely encountered – in creating our new complex.

Planned to open in Estonia’s capital of culture in 2023, the new building of Viljandi Hospital and Health Centre is far from being just another new hospital. It is much more than that. There may not be many of us here in Viljandi County – just 50,000 at last count – and even though we are 160 km from the Estonian capital Tallinn and 210 km from the Latvian capital Rīga, we are making health care history. You now have the opportunity to be part of that.

At the same time as the hospital and health centre is being designed, the health and social system for our entire county will be restructured. But it is bigger even than that: a truly unique project, the first of its kind, in Estonia as a whole, and probably anywhere in the Baltic region. Its aim is to bring all of the links in the very long chain of treatment and social services together symbiotically under one roof and to get them working, promptly and flexibly, as one team to save people’s lives. We want to take the management and quality of medical services to a new level. We will not settle for anything less. Working with the best architects, we want to transform Viljandi Hospital – which was founded in the mid-19th century – into a complex that acts as a signpost of innovation in the social sphere and field of health care for the development of the hospital network throughout the surrounding region. Following the success of our hospital, the plan is to build centres with similar concepts in other Estonian cities, and perhaps even beyond.

The main aim of the architectural competition for the new hospital and health centre of Viljandi Hospital is to find the best integrated spatial solution for the building, which must be guided above all by the following three expectations:

Firstly, the new building, whose total area across all floors will be around 23,000 m², must fit within the unoccupied parcel of land in the historical heart of Estonia’s folk and cultural capital, Viljandi. The building must be in harmony with the symbols of the city: the ruins of the 13th-century castle of the Livonian Order perched high above the picturesque lake below; its two churches; and the original red-brick water tower constructed 100 years ago. Competition entries are therefore expected to design the public space surrounding the hospital in an attractive and inviting way, including smart solutions for traffic and landscaping that are in line with the look and atmosphere of central Viljandi.

Secondly, the plans for the new building must support, from the outset, the project that has already been launched at Viljandi Hospital, whereby all of the parties engaged in the provision of health care and social services who previously worked independently of one another – scattered throughout the old hospital or even in different parts of town – have been brought together under the same management. We expect those who submit entries to provide a vision of how the hospital, via the planning of its thoroughfares and public spaces, can be turned into a logical intersection that allows specialists to run into one another and talk more often and that enables services at different levels to be promptly and continuously intertwined. Solutions are also sought for making optimal use of space in the hospital and health centre.

Thirdly, Viljandi Hospital wants the external appearance of the new building and its visual interior solutions to eschew classic hospital aesthetics, instead promoting positive expectations and a positive attitude to life. For example, the design of corridors and waiting rooms should encourage people to lead healthy lifestyles and urge them to take care of their health by e.g. sharing information on the tests, physical training and health care support services offered at the hospital.

There will be other challenges, of course, all stemming from the objective of creating an innovative hospital and health centre with the best possible interior solution.

You can download the detailed competition brief here.