Author: Akanksha KV Rao
Site Location: Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra
Institute: PES University
Advisor: Ar. Sharath and Ar. Pranathi Udupa

Description

Dementia, one of the fastest-growing health concerns of our time, has created a silent crisis across the globe. In India, despite nearly 8.8 million people living with the condition, awareness remains alarmingly low. Deep-rooted stigma and lack of specialized care often leave families to struggle in isolation. While medical systems attempt to slow the disease, they rarely address the deeper existential crisis dementia brings an erosion of memory, identity, and belonging. This echoes Hamlet’s haunting dilemma in “To Be Or Not to Be” a struggle between existence and erasure, presence and absence.
This project, “To Be Or Not to Be”, responds to that crisis through architecture. At its heart is a dementia village and experience centre, designed not as an institution but as a living community. The experience centre invites the public to step into the fragmented, disoriented reality of dementia, cultivating empathy and understanding in a society that often looks away. The dementia village provides therapeutic, sensory-rich environments that nurture independence, dignity, and healing, while integrating with the rhythms of everyday life.
Here, architecture becomes more than shelter it becomes memory, therapy, and connection. It asks us to not only care for those with dementia, but to truly understand them.

Drawings

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