Hanya Kamel (She/Her)
I am an interior designer driven by creating meaningful playful spaces. Throughout my time at GSA, I have developed a passion for integrating playful solutions within my projects to create more approachable, immersive and experiential environments. I believe in the power of entertainment within design, to drive positive change and encourage supportive interaction, loosening constructs in the process. I enjoy exploring and testing the possibilities that arise from integrating the theatrics and appeal of entertainment into a wide range of typologies, to push boundaries of my discipline further. Within my projects, I enjoy building design strategies and identities with the intention to inspire new memorable experiences, while paying attention to produce an outcome that benefits and attends to social change, in an exciting and stimulating way.
This year, my project ‘Dear Fiction House’ is a Cancer Recovery House that challenges boundaries of healthcare, through the primary use of entertainment as a means for healing.
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Dear Fiction House
Cancer Survivors Journey to Recovery
Dear Fiction House is a Cancer Recovery House that challenges boundaries of healthcare, through the primary use of entertainment as a means for healing. The Fiction House takes cancer survivors on a hopeful, explorative, and experiential healing journey, allowing them to reestablish their drive in a stimulating setting.
Often healthcare spaces are unsupportive to Cancer sufferers and survivors due to their mundane atmospheres and their lack of providence of sense of control. Dear Fiction House challenges these constructs with an aim to deinstitutionalize and destigmatize the recovery healthcare environment through a playful and inventive approach, allowing them to gain independence in a creative engagement process.
With an uplifting energy, the space is sensitively designed to allow each individual to be in control of their own unique recovery journey. Dear Fiction House encourages the engagement with positivist interactive entertainment, immersive, mediated and beyond, to aid their restoration and provide meaningful social interactions. This can loosen intimidation in recovery spaces and change the tone of voice, allowing the individual to feel more at ease. The approach shifts to focus on transparency, with emphasis on friendly and inviting atmospheres, to build a community experience, reducing loneliness in the Cancer community.
The integration of entertainment can allow individuals to find enjoyment and meaning in their healing journey, influencing stimulative restorative effects. This can make recovery a manageable experience, getting away from the mindset of ‘life or death’, implementing a more hopeful message.
At Dear Fiction House, there are two entertainment strategies: Positive Distraction and Constructive Entertainment. These are integrated in the various interactive spaces around the building, promoting the sense of choice. This can constructively support the recuperative process, mentally and physically. Through this play of experiential healing, a supportive ground is built, providing care, consideration and hope in a vitalizing setting, deinstitutionalizing recovery healthcare environments in the process.
Welcome
An Invitation
The entrance experience into the Fiction House is designed to be engaging to loosen any fears that can emerge, offering a peace of mind. making the experience a smooth and reassuring journey in and out.
Control Station
The Establishment of the Sense of Control
The sense of control is an important factor that is prioritized in the Fiction House, to allow individuals to feel a sense of personal choice in the uptake and implementation of their recovery. To make harnessing the sense of control a creative engagement process, the design strategy is built on deconstructing healing into layers within the space. Because everyone’s healing journey is uniquely different, the many healing surfaces in the space will be beneficial to provide flexibility, making it more digestible, adding to the overall inviting experience.
The healing layers are categorized into 4 main methods: ‘Heal with You’, ‘Heal with Care’ ‘Heal with Support’ ‘Heal with Fiction’. These are represented as ‘Control Cards’ and are the main interactive feature in the space.
Control Cards
Control Station Structure
The Fiction Journey
Experience the Fiction House Journey
The Theatre
The Fiction Theatre is accessed mainly through a different specialist entrance that embodies the playfulness of the brand. The space allows visitors to interact together in an immersive setting, creating a beautiful sense of community.
Theatre Perspective Section
Fiction Hall
The Fiction Hall is a space based on entertainment for recovery interventions. It functions like an interactive museum where people can experience the space through a journey route. Interventions here include: Fiction Gallery, Immersive Installations, Community Art, Experience Route, Aromatherapy and Embed Music Room.
Fiction Hall Section
Support Group Experience
Support group spaces in The Fiction House integrate an art installation to target self-reflection healing responses.
A Powerful Conversation
Bespoke Elevators
The Bespoke Elevators are a recognizable landmark within the building, offering a unique immersive transitional experience.
Bespoke Elevator
Room Towers
My Fiction House
Rooms in The Fiction House are designed as Towers, rather than floors to minimize long corridors that feel endless. This was a strategic decision considering the large scale of my site. People can locate to the elevator nearest their room towers, making wayfinding easier and more manageable.
Room Tower Section
More Healing Journey Experiences
The Spa
Plans
