Day Care Centre for People with Mental Disabilities

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

Project idea

This Day Care Centre is designed for people with mental disabilities, who otherwise don’t have other options to spend their days, their lives.

Hungary’s government started a program in 2011 to help people with disabilities to reenter society by closing down huge residential institutions for mentally disabled people and replace those with government-supported apartments and Day Care Centres to help people live their life more independent and free.

Project description

My architectural concept supports the principle of living freely and equally with any other human being. I didn’t design yet another big institute in one building, rather separating the functional groups into smaller buildings, generating space between them. This idea of walking from one building to another is very familiar for us, but it is very crucial to people who live their lives only in two places; at home and in the daycare.

The shape of the buildings reflects the surrounding buildings pitched roofs, but with the tilted M shape creates more public building appearance.
The roof structure is visible in the interior, forming different inner heights. This element of the interior is really important for people with autism.
The smaller rooms with low ceiling make them calm, so I placed the more relaxed functions where the roof is low.
The classrooms where they need to be more active are placed in areas with high, or changing ceiling hights

Technical information

The 4 buildings are connected outside with a reinforced concrete corridor. The organic outline is separated from the rational cubic design of the buildings. The fluid shape represents movement, creating outdoor, but protected spaces for outside classes and waiting areas. Inside, in the inner garden, there is space for gardening in a protected and easily controlled place.

The kitchen and restaurant building is accessible by car, on the northern part of the building. Besides the industrial kitchen area, there is a possibility for people to cook and store food in a smaller kitchen area.

The classroom’s building is created in a way to give space to a special Hungarian teaching method, called MLLC-R Program. Each room has a theme: MOVE, LIVE, LEARN, CREATE and REST. People with mental disabilities visit each room in a group of 8, in a daily shift.

The temporary rooms are meant to be used by only the visitors of this institute, providing temporary living solutions in case of emergency.

The windows sizes and placements are connected to the functions behind them, creating opportunities to see outside, both sitting and standing and even for people in a wheelchair. In the interior, the windows serve as sitting options in multiple heights.
There is no interior design and exterior design separately, only designing spaces. The windows, the furniture, and the structure came together as a whole complex building.

The used materials are mainly wood because of the warm, textured feeling that it provides to the people who get in contact with it. The use of different living, sustainable materials on the ground level, and more functional based materials above us are creating a very soft experience for the users.

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