ALZHERIMER'S DISSEASE

Imagine a world where everybody had alzheimer.

Thinking about this we came to the conclusion that life and society, how we know them right now, would not exist anymore. With the steady loss of skills and memories, a person is in need of help in certain parts of everydays life. Nowerdays this is solved with familz members helping out or care-takers  visiting the sick person. In our imaginary world this service would not exist, so we came to the conclusion, that this would resolve in a much greater conectivity within the people. To be able to manage their daily life, they would have to rely on each other much more than we are used to it. One person having dificulties in one part of the daily life because of the loss of skills or memories, would need help of another person that is confident with this part. And at the same time in other parts it could work the other way  around. So it would be an amazing way of helping and receiving help. And those action have a great and positive emotional effect to the persons involved. While nowerdays the persons affected by alzheimer mostly feel embarrased because of their loss of skills and steady need of help, they would feel needed and important and at they same timeconfident and comfortable in asking for help to those, who they have already helped as well. As a result of this strong connection inbetween the people the living situation in our imaginary world would resolve in small comunities of 5-10 people. Not to small, so there is always help, but at the same time not to big, because this would cause to much confusion. The comunity would be more like a “family”, because the memories  about their family members usualy are kept  until the end.

For our microarchitecture project we decided to focus on an important part of the life with alzheimer. With all the features of alzheimer the person is undergoing a long process with a lot of change. The person will realize the loss of physical and cognitive skills and memories, which is hard to accept and often leads to mood changes or even characteristic changes. Due to that we tried to think about the positive part of change. Remembering our childhood, where dressing up in different ways was always an adventure and very exciting, we want to express this “positive change” with the symbol of a wardrobe as a small piece of daily life.
The wardrobe has, in addition to its regular doors, two more wings, to form a small "changing space" in which the person can change without being seen by others. In this way the person can avoid the embarassement that often goes along with those changes. With the mirror added in one of the wings, the person can, before stepping out in the public start to accept his/her changes by looking in the mirror.



 

SOPHIE SMYTH   MORITZ ULLMANN  RAÚL DÍAZ