Last Room is an ideas competition which asks designers, artists, architects and writers to imagine a last room. Last Room is a hybrid project between art and design.
What do we mean by the word ‘room’? Last Room begins as an ideas competition which asks designers, artists, architects and writers to imagine a last room – only possibly a room for dying but certainly a room for living. The call: Have you ever visited someone in hospital or a care facility and found the space at odds with what you imagine to be an appropriate dwelling? Have you experienced personally or with others limited mobility, ability, or cognitive loss? Using your experience of aging, limits of physical or cognitive ability, combined with your own experience of lived spaces to imagine a room for yourself—a ‘room’ distilled to the essentials, a room providing for a rich and specific existence. Is this room a real or virtual space, a space of the imagination or a material construction? Is this a static or changeable space?
Is this practical design for use or a conjectural/philosophical inquiry? Is this a call for practical alternatives to institutional architectures geared to efficient and cost-effective care? Or is it a call for a philosophical meditation on how we (consciously and unconsciously) ‘build’ the room as the world around us, where the last room is analogous to the first room we invent to contain the infinite universe outside our body—the first inside that is outside? What is a room in relation to memory and consciousness? Can we dispense with the idea of ‘room’? Can we alter it? All of these are open questions to which responses to this proposal might respond.
Submission Deadline: CLOSED
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SUBMISSION SPECIFICATIONS
1) design proposals One or two A1 panels (horizontal), with text, renderings and drawings or images appropriate to the proposal. A two min video is optional (max size 5GB). Panel text is limited to 700 words. Panels should be formatted as PDF’s with images in a resolution of 150dpi, RGB colour space, and compressed to a maximum file size of 5mb. Panels should only be identified with the entry number provided during the submission process (in the lower right-hand corner). Entries should be submitted by dropbox or other service and an email with name, contact details and submission number should be sent to ‘submissions@menlopark.ca’ to which we will reply as confirmation of receipt.
2) written meditation (essay) As an alternative to a visual presentation of a design proposal a 2000 word text on the competition theme in relation to the process of design may be submitted. Essays should only be identified with the entry number provided during the submission process.