Health Care Architecture in the Netherlands describes the development of buildings for health care: hospitals and psychiatric institutions as well as housing and care facilities for the elderly. Since the creation of such amenities the architecture of their accornrnodations has been subject to radical change. Developments in medicine, societal shifts, patients' perceptions, the role of government and, of course, architectural ideologies and theories have to a large degree determined the form of these buildings.
Eight chapters provide a chronological overview of the architecture of buildings for health care, from its emergence as a specific typology to the most recent care complexes. In addition, sorne 50 buildings from the last century and a half are described and illustrated in detall. A series of thematic texts addresses specific aspects of national and international architecture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in relation to buildings for the health care sector.