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Medal Winner 2024

Forget Me Not

Part 1 Project 2024
Victor Williams Salmeron
University of Kent | UK
‘Forget Me Not’ is an almshouse for former carers. It is a sanctuary, an archive and a community rooted in longevity, but constantly changing with time.

Great wisdoms are often lost within buildings of care, for their walls are told, felt and remembered under the metaphor of the hospital. It is a sterile, unwelcoming metaphor, one that has become the stagnant standard defining today’s architecture of care. Anthropologist Marc Auge describes this typology as “the non-place”, spaces where we are only transient, and that fail to provide a sense of belonging or healing. This project questions and contradicts the non-place with an ontological approach by proposing an anthropological and sacred space permeated by culture, narratives and memory.

On the remains of a former Victorian chapel, the project builds upon ancient vernacular almshouse traditions, creating a symbiotic place of community and individuality for those whose care is only implicitly spoken of. As the residency for former carers of a hospital, the space is defined by the personality of its inhabitants in how it remembers and reinterprets their familiar spaces. We see the corridor, the canteen, the ward, and the hospital room under new interpretations, with new poetries to inhabit them.


Tutor(s)

2024
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