Abstract:
This thesis examines whether fulltime care at the end of life for the elderly and incurable can be achieved within an existing formal structure of child and teenage care and recreation. Its design research explores how the parties to such an arrangement can meet, interact and withdraw as necessary and examines whether such a spatial composition might contribute to the decompartmentalisation of modernist societal structures. The site for the research, the Youthtown building in Nelson Street was chosen because its programme had developed from rehabilitation of ‘at-risk’ youth into a nationwide after-school care and recreation package.The thesis proposes refurbishment of the existing structure and the addition of new buildings to accommodate a new programme. This thesis argues that by designing with sensitivity to death, a more relevant architectural expression may be introduced. The aim is to offer a design at the intersection of death and life which generates rituals of levity and gravity to re-instil jouissance into everyday existence.Testing this proposition brings death back into the city to unite youth and the elderly ‘under the same roof ’.