Word on Health Care Facility

Here is a bit of waffle that i will tighten up over the next few weeks

The design proposal is for a facility to treat, manage and observe those suffering from various stages of dementia.
The site currently exhibits evidence of its history, the building up and layering of materials and textures, and the wearing and erosion around the exhaust stack. A balance is achieved between the degradation of the site and its renewal through maintenance and produces a visible trace of time and layering. This balance presents the passerby with instances where the site can be understood as having a memory or being a record of activity.
This record of activity, the alternating erosion and build up of materials has given the site its own vernacular that can be extended to influence the development of the health care facility. The role of memory to the dementia sufferer is a critical consideration in the health facility’s design and there is an important link between the mind, the body and architecture. Memory is made stronger by strong experiences. The spatial experience of architecture is a major contributor, from the ability of landmarks to improve path finding to the decorum of a building serving to reference ideas or activities that take place within.
Dementia sufferers generally experience the gradual loss of memory, among other functions, that starts by affecting the short term memory. Long term memories remain largely intact for a longer period and may provide a base to build on to help offset the loss of basic skills. Path finding is on such basic skill that seems to suffer enormously. The ability of the dementia sufferer to move from one place to another is affected by several factors. The lack of short term memory means it is likely that during the journey the destination will be forgotten. Similarly, the typical situation of admitting a dementia sufferer to a facility when the disease has taken hold, makes it difficult to have much recall of the building layout. This is made more difficult by the design of such facilities to be as simple and uncluttered as possible, resulting in them being consistent and repetitive and difficult to distinguish one room from another as a result.
The approach of the proposed design is to encourage independent decisions among sufferers and to help facilitate this independence and the sense of achievement and satisfaction that dementia sufferers should feel. Factors and experiences that encourage various activities will be explored to provide a system of structuring space to aid in intuitive path finding and to give support as required.
The almost derogatory idea of ‘keeping your mind active’ to offset the effects of conditions such as dementia, has usually been done with activities such as scrabble and crosswords. Perhaps a more useful approach is to keep the mind active by subjecting it to a system that tests everyday skills that are more beneficial to the sufferers quality of life. Much like any learned habit, the habit of doing a crossword is just that. The challenge eventually becomes an activity of repetition and of going through the motions.