Ufuk Uğurlar
M.Arch Graduate Student
Everyday Disjunctions in Hospital Spaces
This exhibition approaches care not as a stable condition but as a fragile, negotiated practice shaped by everyday interactions among different actors in hospitals. Care is not evaluated solely through the concepts of recovery and support, especially in a hospital design; instead, this work defines care as a constantly disrupted, recalibrated, and reassembled process in the hospital environment. In this context, care emerges in moments of disjunctions, where regulated systems and everyday experiences fail to align.
The display is organized into a four-section grid system, in which each unit functions as both an independent element and part of a larger relational structure.
The upper-left unit presents moments of disjunction observed in hospitals. Each moment of disjunction, arranged in stripes, is not fixed. Participants must manually slide each stripe to reveal different moments. This action transforms observation into a tangible experience, prompting visitors to pay attention rather than passively receive information. In this way, disjunction is not explained but understood as fragmented.
The lower-left unit features a split-screen video installation. Here, two synchronized narratives unfold: one from the patient's perspective in the hospital and the other from an architect's perspective. In this video, the patient's daily, even emotional, experience is juxtaposed with the architect's analytical perspective, namely the definition of space in its designed and experienced forms. However, these two perspectives never fully resolve into a unified understanding. This juxtaposition creates a tension that reflects the condition of hospital environments, where multiple actors operate in the same space across different types of care.
On the right, these tensions are translated into a three-dimensional spatial representation. In this section, spatial disjunctions illustrate how the precision regime of daily use transforms architectural plans. These disjunctions can manifest in various ways: they expand, compress, tear, shatter, etc. This is not a representation of damage but a manipulative, relational visualization of intertwined practices. The model shows how hospitals are continually reshaped by various actors within standardized systems. Also, this plan is an abstract representation of Hacettepe University Hospitals, which the exhibition owner frequently uses during routine visits.
This exhibition enacts care by producing knowledge and laying the groundwork for specific relationships. Visitors are not passive observers; they often interpret the exhibition through their own personal experiences. Whether physically engaging with the exhibition pieces or simply questioning the information presented. Care, in this context, becomes a distributed practice involving human and non-human actors. However, the exhibition might also inadvertently diminish the care provided by hospitals, overlooking invisible labor and system functionalities within hospital infrastructure. It risks erasing institutional efforts if participants perceive little personal relevance in them. But this is intentional, embedded within the work’s critical framework. Every act of care involves choice, prioritization, and exclusion. By highlighting disjunctions, the exhibition opens up space for participants to reflect on the often-invisible aspects of the architecture of care.
Finally, the project may not generate the responses anticipated at the time of the exhibition. The relationships presented may not be fully understood, nor may they resonate immediately with visitors. Yet, such outcomes may themselves open new lines of inquiry.
Does a visitor’s lack of experience with the moments identified as “disjunctions” in hospitals render these experiences inaccessible to them?
Where and how do visitors position themselves within the tensions presented in the exhibition?
Are they witnesses, silent observers, or individuals who choose to ignore what is unfolding?
This approach neither offers a definitive solution nor, as the exhibition suggests, guarantees conditions of certainty. Rather, it remains fundamentally incomplete, continuously reshaped through participant experience.
