Bringing the Hospital Back In

The aim of this chapter is to include buildings in studies of context. It foregrounds what is usually considered contextual background—the building—and focuses on the hospital building and the ways in which it matters for the organization and performance of health care. Our approach to the question of context is processual, socio-technical, and inspired by actor-network theory. The actor-network theory lens allows the researcher to consider the building as both background and foreground, as object, context, and process. As an object, and as a matter of fact, the building resides in the background, yet it can always become foregrounded as a matter of concern. This can happens for a multitude of reasons, including that the “object” itself might create unwelcome surprises and obstacles for its human users and, in turn, spur further attempts by specialists in building construction to contain these through mitigating projects and redesign.