Pavilion hospital plan
Hospital Operations & Design
Definition. The pavilion hospital plan is a layout in which wards are housed in separate narrow blocks with windows on both long sides, set well apart and joined only at one end by a corridor or arcade, so that each ward has its own light and through-ventilation.
Explanation
Florence Nightingale made the plan the core of her argument in the third edition of Notes on Hospitals (Nightingale, 1863). She contrasted it with agglomerated wards that share one atmosphere and with the corridor plan, in which a covered corridor along one side of every ward links all wards together. Her rules followed from the pavilion idea: windows on both sides of the ward, pavilions placed apart by twice their height, a limited number of floors, and administration, kitchens and sanitary rooms moved out of the ward block. Taylor (1997) shows how English architects and medical reformers developed and adapted the pavilion hospital through continuing dialogue between 1850 and 1914.
The plan rested on the belief that disease spread through bad air, a theory later abandoned, yet it made ward design a question of patient outcomes. Nightingale herself warned that a good plan is not enough: the Lariboisière in Paris had one of the best block plans of its time and a high mortality, because it was warmed and ventilated by artificial means and built a floor too high. The point anticipates the distinction between structure, process and outcome (Nightingale’s Hospital Plans in 3D).
Related concepts
Healthcare-associated infection Donabedian model Patient experience
Read on The Health Topics
- Nightingale’s Hospital Plans in 3D: Eleven Plates from Notes on Hospitals (1863)
- Nightingale’s Hospital Plans in 3D: Notes on Hospitals, 1863 (Interactive Module)
- Nightingale and Ethics: Five Books, Eight Principles
References
Nightingale, F. (1863). Notes on hospitals (3rd ed.). Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, and Green.
Taylor, J. (1997). The architect and the pavilion hospital: Dialogue and design creativity in England, 1850–1914. Leicester University Press.
Cite this entry: Kurutkan, M. N. (2026). Pavilion hospital plan. In The Health Topics glossary. https://healthtopic.org/glossary/pavilion-hospital-plan/