Health

Galway Regional Sanatorium

1946

Norman White
Architect

Information

Designed by Norman White and team, the Galway Regional Sanatorium (1946) was one of a series of hospitals constructed to treat the condition of tuberculosis in Ireland. Occupying the former territory of an aristocratic demesne, the institution deployed both its site and the forms of modern architecture to realise a curative landscape. Influenced by Alvar Aalto’s Paimio, pulmonary wards were arranged in isolation across an open space occupied by grass, trees and footpaths. Thin in section and cross-ventilated, some of these pavilions contained outdoor wards, further expressing the diminished threshold between inside and outside promised by modernism. Constructed following the Tuberculosis (Establishment of Sanatoria) Act of 1945, the complex continues to function as a hospital.