Soluzioni per la ventilazione naturale e precetti igienici nell’edilizia ospedaliera tra Ottocento e Novecento

Ventilation, heating, cooling and lighting became, between the end of the XIX and the beginnings of the XX century, some essential tools able to guarantee the air salubriousness in the rooms, both for the improvement of the existing buildings, both in the realization of new constructions. The hospital became - as schools, theatres – a particular building typology in which the ventilation systems were finalized to hygiene and healthiness. In this study we analyze the theories contained in the technical texts and manuals, the practical realizations and the original solutions for the natural ventilation of the infirmaries, which are related in the reviews of the period and that often take inspiration to criteria of inexpensiveness. We examine, in detail, the interior configuration of the rooms obtained by vaulted or inclined ceilings, skylights, masonries with an interior hollow-space and with sophisticated mechanisms of getting and evacuation of air currents and, moreover, the systems of regulation of the air’s fluxes related to the external conditions.