By Editor Design.nl / 23-06-2010

Florence Nightingale was a living legend: she was an English nurse, writer and statistician. During the war in Crimea (now part of Ukraine) - a time in which she came to prominence with her groundbreaking work in nursing - she became immensely popular as 'the lady with the lamp': she would do her rounds through the halls tending to wounded soldiers by lamplight.

Few people know that she was more of a manager than a caring nurse, and that she was a driving force behind the professionalization of nursing. Miss Nightingale wrote hundreds of books, letters and pamphlets, bringing a real revolution to healthcare. The challenge for Kossmann.dejong in redesigning the museum was to bring the story of her life and work to the forefront in a contemporary manner.

Florence Nightingale's life can easily be divided into three episodes: her youth and background, the Crimean War period, and her later work and influences. In the museum, each period has its own pavilion with a different approach.

The first pavilion (The Gilded Cage), designed as a rose-garden, symbolized her privileged Victorian youth and her struggle against stifling social conventions.

The second pavilion (The Calling) is wrapped in Turkish tiles while the interior is lined with stretcher frames wrapped in bandages, marking the war in Crimea and how Florence and her team coped with the crisis in the military hospitals.

The Victorian study and a paper bed installation in the third pavilion (Reform and Inspire) represented the last period and shows the other side of Florence, the reformer who campaigned tirelessly for health reform at home and abroad.

The narrative approach comes from three perspectives: Nightingale herself, her environment and the time in which she lived. An installation in the middle of each pavilion represents Florence; her voice – spoken by an actress – brings every visitor very close. Her pronouncements and stories come within reach through a stethoscope. On the walls of each pavilion, her social environment comes to life through portraits and small slide viewers. The latter are also used on the outside and give views onto things such as the industrial revolution in 19th-century England. On the surrounding walls, a link is made with contemporary nursing practice: a kaleidoscopic overview of the development of nursing from Nightingale to today. This surrounds the permanent exhibition and continues to reinterpret Nightingale's story in a contemporary context.

Photography: Thijs Wolzak

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