Good ori­en­ta­tion is im­por­tant in a clinic, so that pa­tients and guests can feel safe and se­cure. How­ever, clin­ics of­ten, over many years, ac­cu­mu­late into an en­sem­ble of build­ings, and nav­i­gat­ing through them is not easy. At the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion clinic of Bad Pyr­mont, the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem needed to con­nect re­con­structed and newly de­vel­oped build­ing sec­tions through a uni­fied con­cept. Moni­teurs chose the theme of move­ment as a leit­mo­tif – a key el­e­ment of any re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ther­apy. Pic­tograms and signs re­ceived rounded cor­ners and a dy­namic de­sign. Every part of the build­ing was as­signed a unique con­cept with an eas­ily recog­nis­able mo­tif. Thus, the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem re­in­forces the new pos­i­tive sense of space and be­comes the link be­tween the old and new parts of the build­ing com­plex.

The Ober­lin Clinic in Pots­dam is the biggest or­thopaedic clinic in Bran­den­burg. The clin­ic’s four build­ings, with a day clinic and out­pa­tient surgery, re­ceive a high vol­ume of pa­tients, with a cor­re­spond­ingly high need for ori­en­ta­tion. Moni­teurs re­vised the in­for­ma­tion struc­ture from the ground up, and re­designed the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem to main­tain the ex­ist­ing sup­port sys­tem. Vis­i­tors pass through the three main lifts in red and are led to the dif­fer­ent build­ings. A map con­tain­ing only the rel­e­vant ori­en­ta­tion in­for­ma­tion sup­ports vis­i­tors’ spa­tial imag­i­na­tion and makes clear where the pas­sages be­tween the build­ings are. On the lifts them­selves are signs to re­as­sure vis­i­tors that they are on the right path.

The Hochge­birgsklinik in Davos, Switzer­land, is vis­ited by lung pa­tients from all over the world. The re­sult­ing lin­guis­tic di­ver­sity places great de­mands upon the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem. Moni­teurs de­cided to work en­tirely with­out lan­guage: friendly pic­tograms show the way to each part of the clinic. Moni­teurs cre­ated al­most a hun­dred pic­tograms, many of them spe­cial­ist sym­bols. Since some spaces are used for mul­ti­ple pur­poses, the sys­tem has to be as flex­i­ble as pos­si­ble. There­fore, staff can print out the pic­tograms as and when needed and place them into the ex­ist­ing frames. Floor plans and an ex­plana­tory leaflet in seven lan­guages sup­ple­ment the pic­togram sys­tem.