Kinderzentrum Bethel (EvKB)

Installation von Heike Weber und Walter Eul
Wandillustrationen von Samy Löwe
Abenteuerspielfläche von Astrid Lowack
Wandgestaltungen von Hannes Trüjen

New building - Protestant Children's Center Bethel

An art concept for children

On August 12, 2023, the new Bethel Children's Center was opened on the grounds of the Protestant Hospital in Bielefeld, its symbolic expressiveness unfolding in a supraregional radiance and underpinning Bethel's medical reputation as a university hospital. The new building of this "lighthouse clinic" combines on 20,000 m² the most modern diagnostic and treatment possibilities in a particularly child- and family-oriented atmosphere, which serves the optimal patient care.

Bright, light-flooded rooms with a high quality of stay form the basis for a healing-oriented clinic stay. The spacious, age-appropriate patient rooms, which offer plenty of room for recovery on all wards, are conceptually complemented by additional public areas. A variety of recreational opportunities with diverse indoor and outdoor play areas have an inviting effect on young patients and their families.

From the very first conceptual vision, our goal was to offer the young patients the opportunity to forget everything around them - everyday hospital life and all pain - for a moment and to immerse themselves in a different, exciting world.Auf dieser Basis haben wir für das neue Kinderzentrum Bethel ein ganzheitliches Gestaltungskonzept mit vier künstlerischen Interventionen entwickelt.

The focus of the artistic design is on the centrally located and floor-spanning magistrals, which create an aesthetic connection between the surrounding building structures and the attached care pavilions. As the visible heart of the building ensemble, a functional color space concept was created here by the artist Hannes Trüjen as a visionary, distinctive and concise world of experience in the form of a holistic, artistic intervention. In correspondence with the illustration concept by Samy Löwe, this also extends to the care pavilions as an interactive wayfinding system.

The maritime and continental specific themes "Vegetation: Water, Climates, Fauna" as well as the interior, color and lighting concept based on them were conceptually taken up in close coordination with the interior designers commissioned by the clinic and artistically implemented as an interactive wayfinding system that can be playfully explored.

The building zones of the clinic were color-coded according to the climatic zones of the earth, including the South Seas, Polar Zone, Temperate Zone, Savannah, Tropics and Desert, and supplemented with matching animal illustrations. In total, more than 200 illustrations have been printed on the walls. Since each animal appears only once in the entire hospital, young patients and their relatives can use them as landmarks if they ever lose sight of each other.Das künstlerische Konzept des Kinderzentrums Bethel wird durch ein spektakuläres Highlight vervollständigt:

For the air space of the representative atrium in the Bethel Children's Center, the two artists, Heike Weber and Walter Eul, realized a cross-floor sculptural intervention by means of an expansive floating sculpture made of mouth-blown hollow glass spheres that connects the two air spaces in the form of an arch. It is a floating, intangible body that permeates the floors like a light-like apparition and changes in its view depending on the viewer's position. 3,500 Bielefeld schoolchildren between the ages of 6 and 18 completed the glass spheres with their own paintings, making the installation unmistakably unique.

The adventure playground in the walk-in courtyard, which was developed for Bethel's young patients, has also been furnished with art. The artist Astrid Lowack developed a dreamy, futuristic water surface that was applied to fall protection mats and thus leaves no limits to the children's playful imagination and development.