It’s an emergency!

Rechner architects spent years working on the new Emergency care hospital in Osijek. A massive healthcare project and a major investment, the building contains advanced surgical halls, cancer treatment center, multiple MR machines, a blood lab and much more - all in all 21 infirmaries, spread across 4 levels.

A project like this involves a huge number of contractors, each with their own specific needs and the investor, Osijek clinical medicine center, also has requests - they want the whole building decorated with our art photographs of the city as a permanent exhibition. Preparation starts with selecting the decorative photos, figuring out the appropriate locations where they’ll be placed and working with our partners at Skripta tisak to produce high quality large framed prints. We then spend days installing the photographs, carefully avoiding any risks - behind the walls there is a complex network of IT, electrical, plumbing and even oxygen installations. Hitting any of the lines would spell disaster, so we check and double check before drilling anything.

At the last moment, we get a unique request. The most sensitive part of the hospital, the Intensive care unit, has a huge empty wall - a perfect place for a wallpaper photo. We’re no strangers when it comes to massive prints, but this wall is really huge: 8 meters wide and 3 meters tall.

A print this big requires hundreds of megapixels.

We’re in luck. The weather is good and we spend a few days taking multi-row HDR panoramic photos than end up being gigabytes in size. Hospital’s leadership selects a classic bluehour postcard-motif of Osijek. It’s a scene every citizen knows by heart and the idea is for the patients to see something calming and familiar once they wake up in the ICU. Our partners from Ante&Mate spend days doing the prints and we use the free time to photograph all the exteriors.

Once the photo wallpaper is installed and all the work on the building is finally completed, we’re left with only 2 days to shoot everything before the grand opening. This is the only chance to shoot the interiors - once the patients start coming in, no photography will be possible. We work at nerve wrecking speed and finish just in time for the hospitals PR department to send out the materials to the media.

The ribbons are cut, the doctors are ready, the first patients start pouring in and the hospital now takes a new form of life.

Every once in a while, we get the same message from friends and acquaintances:

“Hey, I woke up in the hospital after my surgery and I really love that photo”.