As we wrote already in April, Uusi lastensairaala 2017, New Children’s Hospital 2017, is a project building a new children’s hospital in Helsinki, Finland, which will replace the outdated facilities of the current children’s hospitals. The hospital is built based on the needs of the children, the caretakers and the families.
This new hospital is about good endings – like the stories of Tove Jansson. Therefore Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories will serve as an inspiration for the decoration of the hospital – the setting will be based on the archipelago and the sea, forests as well as space and stars.
Photo: SARC Architects Ltd / HS
Together with art, music, pictures, and literature, it is possible to create a healing and inspiring environment for seriously ill children. Each floor of the hospital will be designed according to one Moomin story but without the Moomin characters. Stories are highlighted more on the abstract level.
Photo: SARC Architects Ltd / HS
Anne Berner, Chairman of the New Children’s Hospital 2017 says in the interview with Helsingin Sanomat that the Moomin stories and their themes are perfect for the hospital while they are dealing with for example death, grief, presence, forgiveness and friendship.
In almost every Moomin book by Tove Jansson, the characters are in some new and unidentified environment. In the stories, it is often repeated that the world can’t always be understood and this desperate feeling may also be present in the everyday life of families that have encountered for example a child’s serious illness.
The importance of close family ties is one of the strongest themes of the Moomin books. Because Tove Jansson has succeeded in creating a magical and inspiring world around these themes, the Moomin stories were a natural choice for the main theme of the new Children’s Hospital.
The new Children’s Hospital has been granted the right to the license-free use of the Moomin stories.
Construction work of the hospital began in August 2014, and the hospital specializing in children’s special health care opens in the year 2017.