Julie Moraca

Urban Architecture

The Shared Residential Garden

Back Home: Architecture for Well-being

This project stemmed from a personal fascination regarding the role of architecture in favouring human well-being. Since the research phase, the interviews with five homeless people from Nijmegen were fundamental departure points. The proposed programme aims to transform the obsolete concrete structure of the Molenpoort Shopping Mall into a rehabilitation centre with residential units, communal facilities and affordable housing.

The research highlighted how the few shelters of the city centre not only fail to provide enough spaces for the homeless; they are inhospitable places where people with alcohol, drug and mental issues are not authentically ushered towards recovery and re-introduction in the society.

Being aware that the homelessness controversy resides in a deeper systemic failure, the project does not aspire to a simplistic architectural solution, yet it aims to bring awareness to topics such as rethinking shelter typology, building with local and healthy materials and the human-nature relation in the built environment.

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