All around

"All Around" is a project designed for the Alzheimer's residence of Grace, a facility located near Milan. The starting point was to think about how we could make the patients' rooms welcoming and personalized, while at the same time ensuring an easy reading of the different spaces for patients in advanced stage.

Background

All Around is an interior project designed for the Alzheimer's residences of the Grace integrated day care center in the sustainable village of Figino, north of Milan. After research related to Alzheimer's Syndrome and everything related to it, we started from the concept of Therapeutic Habitat to recreate in the guests a sense of belonging through environmental qualities, objects, furniture and structure itself that meets both their functional and emotional needs.

The reference scenario is inspired by the designs of Piero Portaluppi, furniture elements by Ettore Sottsass, and objects that can be commonly found inside homes.

Video introduction

The project involves five rooms, intended for two guests, including two of them designed to accommodate a couple, all located on the second floor of the day care center. The concept of All Around is related to the concept of a "box within a box," in fact the project stands as a second skin of the building itself that is inserted within the rooms. This makes it easily replicable in other contexts giving rise to new scenarios. The unified structure is determined in particular by three factors, which will be analyzed in more detail: first, there is the structure itself, consisting of shelves, vaults and desks, enclosed within white vertical elements that punctuate the space and connected by a frame that runs horizontally at a height of 210 cm. The other two characteristic elements of the project concern aesthetic qualities such as colors, materials and textures and memory objects. The basic reference materials and colors are related to warm materials and hues ranging from blue to green tones. The third design component concerns memory objects of which five categories, one per room, have been identified. In this way, each room of the Center differs from the others in terms of its two color tones and the category of objects displayed, as well as the compositional modules of the structure.

Structure

The main characteristic of All Around is that it is a structure independent from the space in which it is inserted. It is not a simple piece of furniture but a complex system that, thanks to its dimensions and qualities, can be considered as a kind of interior architecture with the possibility of being inserted inside any room. The All Around project is inspired by the furniture found in italian homes around the 1950s, mainly wall-mounted furniture that occupied much of the perimeter of rooms. This feature is taken up by using more modern and effective materials and revisiting the system in a modern key, making it lighter and more lively. The structure is composed of different materials so that the combination of them can clearly define the space. The use of inexpensive, durable and high-quality materials leads the design to be able to be a point of contact with the guest himself.

Materials and colors

Materials are mainly related to wood essences, such as national walnut wood in dark tones and oak laid in a herringbone pattern for floor coverings. Soft fabrics such as warp velvet made of natural materials and applied to the seating of desks and armchairs intended for the living area, located at the entrance to each room, were chosen. Finally, in addition to the sound-absorbing material whose purpose is to limit acoustic disturbance, a key element is the opaque cellulose adhesive wallpapers, which were heavily used as decors in the 1950s. Inside the rooms, color shades ranging from blue to green have been chosen: these colors are the result of a study related mainly to Alzheimer's Syndrome. In fact, I carried out research on the psychology of color, color therapy applied to Alzheimer's and its use as a Nonpharmacological Therapy, and the effects of color in symptoms related to the disease, such as Sundowning Syndrome. The choice fell on blue and green tones as they were found to be calming and balancing colors, suitable for rooms intended for bedrooms in Alzheimer's residences. If the choice had been warm colors such as red, an opposite effect would have been achieved in the residents, creating in them a sense of agitation and nervousness.

Textures

In terms of textures, the wallpapers contribute to a homogeneous and unified environment. The main reference is the design of the majolica tiles made by Giò Ponti for the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento in 1960, in collaboration with Ceramiche D'Agostino. From the 33 designs made by Ponti, and constituting the so-called "Infinito Blu," I selected and matched 4 decors for each of the rooms in the Grace center, trying to match them so as not to create too dense or hypnotic patterns. The patterns are characterized by the color to which Ponti complements white: this choice is related to the need to achieve clarity and harmony of contrast, leading to immediate perception. The 4 patterns that make up the basic module have square dimensions of 25 cm, thus reaching the final module of 50 cm.