Eupnea is a film by artist Ilona Sagar made exclusively for the Saturated Space research cluster at the AA. It explores the colour-space of healthcare environments in Britain, which to this day are guided in their design by colour analyses from the 1950s. Eupnea focuses on the connection between colour, health and well-being through its manifestation in the design of hospitals.

The aesthetic of Eupnea originates from Faden Birren’s functional colour chart for hospitals, schools and factories. Still in use today, these colours were originally intended to stimulate, heal and break up the institutional aesthetic, but now are seen to have the reverse effect.

The film includes interviewed ex-patients, health workers and architects anonymously about their experience of the hospital environment. These monologues capture recollections of colour, form, texture and the subjects’ personal discordant relationship to the space. Hospitals can be seen as the site of a collision between internal and external languages in design, cognition and the human body. The external technical, functional syntax clashes with an internal language which is messier, more visceral and emotional.