Living with Buildings – Review

Last week, the I Science Culture Club went to the Wellcome Collection to explore their permanent galleries as well as their temporary exhibition: Living With Buildings.

The permanent collection displays items from Henry Wellcome’s personal abundance of medical artefacts from around the world. It is a fascinating display of both historical and modern science and medicine. But the highlight of the trip was Living With Buildings.

The Living With Buildings exhibition explores the impact of our immediate surroundings on our health. It takes visitors on a tour—mostly in London—of the past and the present, and how a city is developed with human health in mind. Included in the exhibition is a discussion of the Paimio sanatorium for tuberculosis, and how simple things like the design of a chair or the colours of the walls can impact a patient’s recovery and wellbeing. The exhibition forces you to think about and to recognise all the innovations in city planning that are taken for granted. On the second floor of the exhibition is a full scale “Global Clinic.” Designed by the charity “Doctors of the World,” the clinic is optimised to overcome the challenges doctors face in providing medical care to people in remote areas— that it is often provided in tents—but still be easy to build and customise for each scenario.

Living With Buildings is on until 3rd March 2019 at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road

Julia Langer is studying for a MSc in Science Communication at Imperial College London

Banner Image: Wellcome Collection, Rachel Ng