Gratitude and Commemoration Site for Health Care Personnel

Location 
Ankara, TR

Client
Ankara Metropolitan Municipality 

Year
2021

Size
232.000 m²

Team Members
Bilge Altuğ, M. Metin Polat, Demet Dinçer

Awards
3rd Prize

Loss is "to be deprived of something that you have,” while mourning is the period that comes after the loss with the bursting sorrow. The mourning period is similar in different communities, though it also depends very much on the culture. Hence, it cannot be separated from it. In Turkish culture, aside from the usual farewell rituals, the people left behind follow other ways during the mourning. A prevalent concept is; "the house of mourning/condolence," which defines how these rituals have allocated virtual spaces for the mourning itself and the mourners.

This project aims to create public spaces that allow different types of mourning rituals for a society exhausted by the pandemic and to constitute memories of this period for the next generations. Most importantly, it aspires to perpetuate the gratitude felt for the health personnel who sacrificed their lives to save others by rendering a spatial representation. The spaces designed within this context emphasize the farewell that couldn't be bid and an overdue need to be in collective mourning, bonding with the usual routines in life.

The COVID-19 Pandemic has underlined how attached and dependent we are on each other, both individually and socially.

Therefore, in this project, commemoration spaces are designed to work with social areas. It was aimed to turn remembrance into a part of daily life, to add to the usual activities in life. Like a line on a seed, the project contains a continuous line that evolves into a wall, and each side tells different sides of the same story. The continuity of the "line" transforms into greenery representing new life.

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