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Room For life
Figure 36 Room for life
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Figure 37 Common area
Figure 38 Reading area
Figure 39 Conversation room In the centre of Aalborg ’Room for Life’ is located. A cancer counselling centre one can use, if one have cancer close in life. Here one can discuss cancer related aspects with people who are similarly disposed regarding this matter. There is too, some staff present at the Home of Life, though, it is not a hospital. One will find psychologists and volunteers who help taking care of the mental aspects of cancer, that there is only very little or no room for at the hospital (Johansen, 2020).
Due to the location being in the middle of a residential street, the organisation of building volumes is displaced into five smaller units connected by one central sixth unit. This entails the building to blend into its surroundings without evoking attention by almost characterising itself as five smaller residential houses. Exactly, this is a key deliberation for the project, and furthermore experienced when entering the centre.
Instead of facing a hospital-like and clinical atmosphere, one is met with warm and bright colours, natural materials like wood, fabric and leather that associates a homelike and welcoming atmosphere. In the centred unit one will find a big shared kitchen in connection to a big dining table by a large window overlooking the small, intimate garden. This big open space functions as the gathering heart of the building where people can interact and enjoy themselves. The big common room is lit up by big circular skylights symbolising hope and frankness. In the remaining units’ practicalities and smaller counselling rooms are placed, giving opportunity to talk in private with a psychologist, a close friend or a volunteer. Within the counselling rooms the windows are placed dynamically in different heights and sizes providing the room with daylight, as well as intimacy and privacy for users. Common to the entire building one will find colourful furniture that just as well could be found in a private home; soft couches and armchairs, wooden bookshelves, easels, art pieces, evocative pendants, wooden floors etc. An interior ensuring that users of the building find the atmosphere pleasant and not hospitallike (Johansen, 2020).
