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Memento Loci – Shoreditch Centre for Arts and Amnesia

Part 1 Project 2019
Aneliya Kavrakova
University of Greenwich | UK
Memento Loci, a reminder of place, explores the relationships between memory and materiality, public and private, distortion and solidity. The building is divided into two contrasted parts that merge in its centre, both architecturally and programmatically.

The west part faces the hectic Shoreditch life providing an exhibition space for the public. This narrates a series of almost-linear and almost-repetitive spaces created by tall non-loadbearing fabric cast concrete columns. The quiet and hidden east side provides a safe haven for amnesia patients, including doctors’ offices, an art therapy workshop, private painting studios and three apartments. The basement is a set of five passages where individuals can find a contemplation space and leave behind mementos from their pasts. These mementos are stored in the archive, which forms the merging point. The archive starts at the basement level and expands with each upper floor as if overtaking the memory of the building. The fabric formwork bends and twists directing the patients towards the archive, while keeping the public away from the private spaces. The patients, with possibly no visual memory of the building, build muscle memory through the concrete’s texture and thus feel safe as long as this tactility is present.

Aneliya Kavrakova

Tutor(s)
Yorgos Loizos
Ned Scott
2019
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