Sacramento Hospice

PROJECT - SACRAMENTO HOSPICE By Sarah Hashem ORIGINATION- Project and project justifications with statistics are interesting. Information has given the requirement of a Children Hospice. According to the partaker, the site is located in Sacramento city, close to the golden state highway. The site provides close access to the St. Hope public school for convenience. But with the design development the connections among surroundings are not properly reflected. It would have been better to have city map with commercial, educational and other related buildings with activity connections to identify the proposed Hospice sustainability and connectivity. Basically high standard of Macro level research is missing. It would have been better, if more information is given regarding the residents at Sacramento city. Their socio-economic level and social cultural lifestyles. According to my perception the socio-economic level seems to affect the lifestyles of children and many factors are linked to the geographical area and may depend on environmental, cultural and social aspects of the city of residence. VIEWPOINT TO DESIGN- • It is very important to have the partaker’s insight and design philosophy prior to the design development. In my opinion, those are missing. Further I cannot see a concept for the project. Accordingly, it is very difficult to provide a true validation to your design. • Design brief with major activities or important areas are not discussed. • According to some research, it is identified that yoga, meditation, massage, aromatherapy, art therapy and music therapy can sometimes help children having cancer. I wonder whether Sarah has done any research on those areas. Art and Music therapy are so effective that they can lower anxiety and fear, ease pain, improve communication with their health care team and rebuild self-esteem that they may have lost due to treatment. • Due to less research as an Architect, design has become a just building which could be used for any other events. DESIGN- • Four rectangles [04 main structures] are individually placed, and they have no connections to each other. Proportionately courtyards and walkways are insignificant. • Total design is very congested and very formal. Links among each floor and each levels are missing. • Courtyards are nonfunctional and forcibly included. • Ground Floor and First Floor are totally for support activities and the Second Floor only for Medication and rooms. Those room designs are poor too. • Relevance of the Experience diagram is unclear. • Section 1-1 and Section 2-2 show that there are no vertical connections. • Inclined roof inclusion is questionable. This cannot merely be to avoid rain damage. The roof is a part of the building form. • Total design is very introverted and stiff. • Design has not mainly catered to user category – Children. If you are catering to children aged from 0 -19, there are lot more to be thought about. OVERALL COMMENT- Poor design JUROR- Archt. Damith De Silva Chartered Architect BSc (BE)1st Class Honours, M.Sc. (Arch) AIA (SL), ASID (Allied Practitioner) USA, MIM(SL), OPA, MCPM, IMSL, IEPSL, IAENG, PRMIA Member of Sri Lanka Association of the Urban Designers Member of The National Trust - Sri Lanka Senior Lecturer Grade 1 – University of Moratuwa, SRI LANKA 88, JAMBUGASMULLA ROAD, NUGEGODA, SRI LANKA TEL.+94 0112809849/2853712/0777 – 363139, Fax: +94112809849 www.damithdesilva.com