Bolnišnica, Šempeter pri gorici
The exterior of the hospital in Šempeter pri gorici (Saint Peter-by-Gorica) is all Eastery, shiny plates of robin’s-egg-blue with cotton-candy-pink elevator banks. All a bit too much. Despite this, whenever I come around the bend that reveals the tall building I feel my heart tighten in my chest with deep emotion. This is where Adam was born and spent the first week of his life. I made this short drive many times last winter, sometimes several times a day and always with deep emotions — joy, anticipation, concern, worry, hope, and mixed in with all of these an overwhelming new style of love I hadn’t known about before. Those drives have left an emotional memory, so even if I am just passing by the building I still feel echoes of those feelings when the cloying building minces into view.
The main entrance to the hospital faces southwest and the building’s oblique V shape catches the sun even in winter. Plantings include lazy palmettoes and massive bushes of rosemary and lavender busy with bees. Inside things get ugly. The color scheme is appalling, a visual bludgeoning that can’t be good for the patients: dark aqua, mustard-yellow, and blood-red. This last is especially alarming in the elevators, where it is applied to every surface but the floor, where one would actually expect the color to pool quite readily. I’ve never been in a building that’s so hard on the eyes. It’s like it was designed by Mike Brady on PCP.
I should have had it done a long time ago.
In spite of its aesthetic faults, I still love this hideous building, because that’s where my son’s little life began.
I often wonder, when I drive by that hospital, if it was supposed to be a highly modern design when it was built, or was it ugly even then…
But did you ever see Trieste’s hospital? It’s even uglier.
Comment by Lilit — Thursday 8 September 05 @ 22.46 MDT+2.00
So, why didn’t you post pictures of the building, already? Nobody cares about yer damn head!
Comment by jdog — Friday 9 September 05 @ 04.51 MDT+2.00