RE-READING STORIES OF HOUSES in Spain

T6 - Alzheimer disease - Ege + Aylin + Ángela

Brief Introduction to Alzheimer disease

We remember days, moments.
We remember a million feelings, a thousand thoughts ,a hundred faces.
We remember behaviors, fine motor skills.

Memories...defines our personality.

What happens, if you can´t remember?

Alzheimer is a neurodegenerative illness and the most common form of dementia.
It causes problems with thinking, memory and behavior. The majority of the affected people are
65 years old, but it can appear earlier or later. Each person is unique that´s why everyone make their own experiences in alzheimer. The disease is splitted in 7 stages. It´s difficult to know in which step the affected person is because the steps can overlap.
Stage 1: No cognitive disturbances.The illness damages already the brain without showing any symptoms.
Stage 2: Very mild cognitive disturbances. The Affected person forgets words and has difficulty recalling events that happened recently.
Stage 3: Mild cognitive disturbances. Family, Friends and employers note the first difficulties. Recognizable difficulties by the implementation of duties in working-life and social life

Stage 4: Moderate cognitive disturbances No orientation, they are losing track of the day or date, they becoming confused about the surrounding area. Forgetfulness with own, personal past.
Stage 5: Moderate strong cognitive disturbances.There appear Remarkable blackouts.

Some affected persons start to need assistance at everyday activities.
Stage 6: Strong cognitive disturbances. The memory is getting worse. Furthermore a personality change can appear and people need extensive help at everyday activities.
Stage 7: Very strong cognitive disturbances. In this last step the person loses the ability to confide in his or her surrounding area, to take part of a conversation and to control movements.

Story: Will you remember me ?

My Name is Isabel I´m 19 Years old and will I tell you the story of my grandfather’s disease.
He lives in Ibiza, in Never never land house and we always visit him. He loves nature, that´s why he chose to live in this house.

A few years ago my mother and me went to visit him during our holidays. Everything was fine but than the symptoms appeared step by step. First my Grandfather forgot the keys, but we thought it was normal because that also happens to everybody. But then he began forgetting lots of simple things as locking the door, closing the windows but someday he started to forget to take off the hotplate. When he told me his old stories which I had already heard a thousand times, he forgot many parts and always broke up in the middle because he couldn´t remember.
It was conspicuous.
My mum took him to the doctor who couldn´t see anything .
After a while we got a call: he had get lost in the city and couldn´t find the way home. After that happened we took him again to the doctor, Now he had an assumption: Alzheimer.
That changed everything. As he lived alone my mum has now to take care of him, she is always there to control everything. At the beggining, I didn´t see my mum very often and our family was splitted in two parts. When I visited him again he was in a very bad mood and isolated himself from us. He didn´t act normal like I had always known him. He always called for my grandmother and asked me where she was but she had died five years before. Everything happened so fast that the doctor said that he could take medicine but that only delays the illness. My mother was very stressed, therefore my whole family moved to his home. We had to change lot of things at the house because it was very dangerous for him.

Now, he cannot live alone anymore. He needs his family and a safety home. Sometimes, he behaves normal but then like a foreign person. He is not himself anymore. He makes so many mistakes and always forgets everything very fast. We can´t stop the illness but we will be there and we will take care of him.

''Alzheimer´s the cleverest thief, because she not only steals from you,

but she steals the very thing you need to remember what´s been stolen.''

-Jarod Kintz

T5

Journal of an architect:
´
-Today one of the most complex projects of my career has been proposed to me. One day through the door a couple of middle age came into. The first thing that caught my attention was the exhaustion in her eyes. Next to her, an apparently healthy man, but later I realized that he wasn’t what he pretended to be. With this premise, the project begins.

She wanted to move to another house because, the house was increasingly small and devoid of elements that would make life easier for a husband who had a disease that produced a progressive degeneration of mental and motor. The couple looked for a quiet and spacious place. They found it in 40 kilometers north of Seville (37 ° 40'33.4 "N 6 ° 11'15.7" W) with views to the reservoir Minilla A detached house built by architect Emilio Ambasz that met all the requirements they were looking for, but it needed an overhaul that would allow them to face the challenges ahead.

From the current 40 to 48, the husband has undergone an evolution of disease that reaches its final stage passing about 15 years approximately after the first symptoms begin. During their first visit Sandra started to tell me the story of her husband’s disease.

John, the husband, began to have trouble at work. He was increasingly distracted and distant from both his family and his workmates. With the pass of time this situation leads Juan to a depression and this fact made the familiar situation worse. This is compounded by memory loss and a series of involuntary grimaces that were virtually undetectable at first but gradually intensified.
At this point and after several medical tests doctors said that it was unusual Huntington's disease. Moreover they told them that the disease would continue degenerating and it would be a difficult situation for the whole family, including children.

From then until now, John has become worse up to the point that he would suffer frequent and prolonged spasms, cognitive failures and a series of problems.

Every day Sandra had to help Juan in everything, that means, she had to dress him and so on. His speech was getting worse and it had non-sense. He was not able to communicate, watch TV, read or whatever… he couldn’t practice judo, his favorite sport.

This terrible situation and the stressful life that we find in a city like sevilla, lead the family to come to a decision: change the style of life they have had so far.
This ambitious project, is not only about remodeling the house itself for an individual with a particular disease, we have also the intention of rebuild a home that allows the family to have a better life.
Thinking not only in the self-reliance of Juan, also is important to take into account his happiness and the health of the rest of the family.

Diario de un arquitecto:

-Hoy me han propuesto uno de los proyectos más complejos a los que me haya enfrentado, en mi carrera profesional. (Un día) Por la puerta entró una pareja de mediana edad. Lo primero que llamó mi atención fue el agotamiento en los ojos de la mujer. A su lado, había un hombre aparentemente, sano que más tarde descubriría que no era así. Con esta premisa(visita) comenzó este proyecto.

Ella quería cambiar de casa ya que la suya se le estaba quedando cada vez más pequeña y vacía(escasa) de elementos que hiciesen fácil la vida de su marido. Él padecía una enfermedad que le producía una progresiva degeneración psíquica y motriz. La pareja buscaba un lugar apartado, tranquilo y espacioso. Lo encontraron 40 kilómetros al norte de Sevilla (37°40'33.4"N 6°11'15.7"W) con vistas al embalse de Minilla y en cuya finca había toros en libertad. Una vivienda unifamiliar construida por el arquitecto Emilio Ambasz, que reunía todos los requisitos que andaban buscando, pero que necesitaba una remodelación que les permitiera afrontar las dificultades venideras.

Desde los 40 hasta los 48 años actuales, el marido ha sufrido una evolución de la enfermedad, la cual llegará a su etapa final transcurridos 15 años aproximadamente después de que comiencen los primeros síntomas. Durante su primera visita, Sandra comenzó a contarme la historia de la enfermedad que estaba desmembrando la unión familiar.

Juan, que así se llama el marido, comenzó a tener problemas en el trabajo, andaba cada vez más distraído y distante tanto de su familia como de sus compañeros. Con el paso del tiempo esto derivó en una depresión, que lejos de ir a mejor empeoraba cada día y complicaba cada vez más su vida familiar. Esto se agravaba con las pérdidas de memoria y una serie de muecas involuntarias que al principio eran prácticamente indetectables, pero que poco a poco se intensificaron.

Llegado a este punto y tras varias pruebas médicas detectaron que se trataba de la inusual enfermedad de Huntington. Los médicos les informaron de que la enfermedad continuaría degenerando y que deberían afrontar una situación difícil para toda la familia, incluidos sus dos hijos.

Desde ese momento hasta ahora, Juan ha ido empeorando hasta sufrir espasmos cada vez más frecuentes y prolongados, fallos cognitivos y una serie de problemas que dificultan su día a día. Cada jornada comenzaba con Sandra ayudando a Juan a asearse, vestirse y desayunar, continuaba lleno de conversaciones cada vez más complicadas y con un Juan impotente, incapaz de realizar las acciones más cotidianas como pueden ser leer, ver la tele, comer o practicar su deporte favorito, el judo. Esto producía (provocaba) que la relación, ya no solo con Sandra, sino con sus hijos también, comenzase a oxidarse y hacerse cada vez más costosa. Esto, unido al estrés que conlleva vivir en pleno centro de Sevilla, llevó a la familia a tomar la decisión de cambiar radicalmente su estilo de vida.

Y por esto nos hallamos hoy aquí.

Este ambicioso proyecto que tenemos entre manos tiene como objetivo no solo la remodelación de la casa en sí para adaptarla a una persona con una enfermedad concreta, sino para reconstruir una vivienda que permita a los cuatro volver a tener una vida plena. Pensando no solo en la dependencia de Juan, sino en la felicidad y salud del resto de su familia.

T7 - Story

T3 - Story

By: Maria Helene Saether, Rafal Strzelczak and Lisanne Alexandre

Story

In 1999 Francisco de Blas approached the Spanish architect Alberto Campo Baeza. He gave him a book with the poems of Luis Cernuda. It’s a book full of intense emotions, translated in poems. The populair poem ‘Donde habite el olvido’ describes a world where one leaves aside all their problems to achieve the desired freedom. Francisco sent this poem to the architect and it was clear that he wanted something more than just a house. He wanted a home where emotions and thoughts were considered as part of the construction material. The house refers to a cave and opposite to a hut.

In 2000 the house was finished and Francisco moved to it together with his girlfriend Sara. In 2002 they decided to get married and in 2003 their firstborn Pablo came to the world. They were very happy with the three of them, but they also liked to expand a little bit more later.

A few years later there dream came true and Sara got pregnant again. In 2006 Diego was born, but unfortunately he has a severe form of autism. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social interaction, verbal and non-verbal communication. Also with some forms it can happen that there is a restricted and repetitive behaviour. But that’s something which develops over the years. The first few months they didn’t notice anything different about Diego than they had with Pablo. But then the differences started to notice..
By 12 months: no babbling and no gesturing like pointing and waving.
By 16 months: no single words.
By 24 months: no two-word phrases.
And as the time went by, they could see that Diego has a loss of any language or social skill. He would have that for the rest of his life, at any age.Although they found it hard, they made the best of their lives together. Gladly Diego his favourite colour is green, whenever he would go bad, they could just sit him in front of the glass and he would go calm again.

Unless till now, 2015. Diego is 9 now and living with him gets harder everyday. They are having contact with different psychiatrics in the surrounding, but they also wanted to ask us, as architects, how we could make there lives any easier.

Not only for the sake of Diego, but also for there own and there son Pablo, who gets mostly forgotten.