Tusa Hospital Hospital

About Tusa Hospital Hospital

Tusa Hospital is an interior design project for the complete renewal of an existing hospital in Istanbul. All floors were renovated in line with a new design identity, including the outpatient clinics, operating rooms and patient rooms. Calming pastel tones were combined with natural materials to create a warm atmosphere, while a contemporary architectural language was preserved. The clean and cosy approach aims to help patients feel at home. The renewed interior covers 8000 square meters and was completed in 2025.

Umut Cem Caglayan's design for Tusa Hospital's reception environment represents a significant contribution to contemporary healthcare interior architecture, demonstrating how institutional medical spaces can transcend clinical austerity to achieve environments that actively support healing, reduce patient anxiety, and honor human dignity through thoughtful material selection, spatial organization, and chromatic sensitivity. The project engages with well-established healthcare design research emphasizing biophilic design principles, the psychological benefits of natural material references and organic color palettes, and the critical importance of spatial legibility in reducing stress for patients and visitors navigating medical facilities during moments of vulnerability. The compositional achievement centers upon the sculptural reception desk, a masterful integration of form and function that serves simultaneously as wayfinding landmark, operational workstation, and symbolic threshold between public arrival and clinical treatment zones, its curvilinear geometries suggesting accessibility and welcome while its material palette of warm wood and pristine white establishes institutional credibility and cleanliness expectations. The ceiling treatment demonstrates particular sophistication, juxtaposing an exposed industrial open-grid system that honestly reveals building systems and creates visual texture against smooth planes of sage green that introduce biophilic color association with growth, renewal, and nature without compromising professional atmosphere, the massive circular luminaires float within these green fields like abstract representations of natural skylights, bathing the space in diffused gentle illumination that avoids harsh shadows and clinical glare. The chromatic restraint evident throughout the palette, limited essentially to wood tones, architectural white, and the distinctive organic green with strategic deep forest green branding accents, creates visual coherence that allows functional elements to register clearly while preventing chromatic cacophony that could increase environmental stress. The integration of natural wood cladding at the reception desk, elevator surrounds, and likely other surfaces visible in adjacent zones introduces tactile warmth and organic material authenticity increasingly recognized in healthcare literature as supporting parasympathetic nervous system activation and stress reduction. The flooring selection of soft gray veined marble or marble-effect porcelain provides institutional durability and cleanability while its naturalistic patterning and neutral tonality offer visual interest without competition, grounding the composition in material substance. Spatial proportions appear generous with ceiling heights that prevent institutional compression, horizontal emphasis that creates calm rather than vertical drama, and clear circulation paths that support intuitive wayfinding, particularly important for elderly visitors or those experiencing medical anxiety that can compromise cognitive processing. The branded identity element, a stylized organic emblem suggesting human figures in caring relationship or perhaps botanical growth forms, establishes immediate institutional recognition while its abstracted character allows universal accessibility across cultural contexts. This work invites consideration of how contemporary healthcare design can fulfill rigorous functional, operational, and regulatory requirements while simultaneously addressing the emotional, psychological, and experiential needs of patients and families encountering medical systems during challenging life moments.