Calan / Women Safe House & Cafe
Post pandemic, like never before, women and children have found themselves constantly locked with their abuser. Domestic violence cases increased by 25-33% globally in 2020, and numbers are in continuous rise since then. So much that Domestic Violence has been defined as COVID VIOLENCE, as in the inescapable violence created by covid-related lockdowns.
Focusing on the ideal opening of a new branch of Shelter, CALAN, aiming to contain all the parts of the rehabilitation process after escaping from domestic violence, in one structure. Designed to assist both guests and members of staff from the first rescue, through a long stay use of the facility to heal and empower the guests, ending with the reintegration of the user in the society.
Calan focuses part of its design (on the Ground Floor) to cater a Café space where links to the trauma of abuse are subtly introduced in the design to raise awareness. The healing process is highlighted through a site dominant intervention that allows for two metal ‘ramp-like’ structures, used as devices to travel through the space unlike what the guests have ever lived before.
Women during the Rehabilitation process in the Calan Safe House part of the building have the chance to be Reintegrated gradually by working in the Cafe kitchen where the contact with the public is minimum. This allows for the Safe House to function with internal funds coming from the attached Cafe.
The kitchen employees are/have been guests at the Calan Safe House, they know ‘the face of the abuser’, and can ‘keep an eye out’ on the people in the cafe. To inforce this, the kitchen is divided from the rest of the Cafe and Transitional spaces through walls with a 50mm slot in the wall and covered by a double layer of mesh permanently placed there to allow for the people in the kitchen to observe the guests.
The aim is for the Cafe to become a space where people can go to safely meet someone they do not know in person.
Year: 2022 - Middlesex University Dissertation Project
Award: Architects for Health competition candidate