The Healing Journey

Exposed to a lifetime of control, victims of domestic abuse have trouble rebuilding a healthy relationship with public communities. Every day, stepping out of their homes requires precautions and planning for getting to and from one safe space to another. Therefore, protection becomes a vital aspect that often shapes through a frame of isolation leading to a loophole of mental and physical damage.

For the wounded, a simple walk becomes a battling journey. With the intention of a pleasant and safe experience, creating an elevated walkway through a series of little pockets within the public threshold helps to create safe environments that allow for the coexistence of private and public volumes.

Small familiar spaces aim to rebuild relationships with the public while an elevated walkway retrieves control for the ones who had lost it once. In Weston Super Mare, where more people are troubled with deprivation, chances of domestic abuse are much higher than in the surrounding cities. The former quarry, once a centre for industrial activities and the supply of most of the stones around the area, now can provide a shelter for the survivors, where they can find peace within the protecting stone walls of the site.

To blend in with the context of the quarry and maintain its characteristics, recycled brick stones form the exterior of the building as if rising from the ground; the interior however, uses adobe bricks from the local land rich in clay. Both materials are locally sourced and low-tech, making the building’s carbon footprint low by large amounts.