Doménica Naranjo

Advisor: Carlos Rueda

Architectural concept of St. Charles Hotel, Winnipeg. Shows people interacting in modernized interiors and original facade. Mood is reflective and thoughtful.
Architectural concept design for the St. Charles Hotel in Winnipeg. The image shows a blend of indoor and outdoor spaces with people interacting in a modern lobby area. Warm lighting and soft textures create a welcoming atmosphere. Patio seating and greenery offer a serene outdoor feel. Text overlays on the left provide context and background on the project.
A collage features a modern arch and steps juxtaposed with an old brick building with fire escapes. People engage in activities, conveying an urban renewal theme.
Digital media collage exploring thresholds, materiality, and moments of gathering.
Abstract architectural scene with curved, white structures and angular gray buildings. Two figures walk in the foreground, adding scale and movement.
Close-up view of conceptual model, highlighting light, shadow, and human inhabitation within thresholds.
Digital collage featuring a building with large windows and geometric designs on the left, and people interacting near greenery and a cyclist on the right.
Digital media collages (two shown side-by-side in landscape format) examining materiality within private and public gathering spaces.
A split image shows two minimalist interior designs. Left: a spacious lounge with wooden walls, skylight, and people sitting. Right: a modern kitchen, wooden accents, people interacting, light tones.
Digital media collages (two shown side-by-side in landscape format) exploring materiality and weathering in a semi-private sunroom and community kitchen.
Two architectural sketches of a modern, minimalist room. The left shows a person reading amid bookshelves; the right features people sitting near large windows.
Digital media collages (two shown side-by-side in landscape format) investigating materiality and light within the library and meditation room.

Material, Memory, and Care: An Intervention on The St. Charles Hotel, Winnipeg

Buildings can experience cycles of life: beginnings, growth, and endings, rooted in the present while planning, making, and anticipating what comes next. Simultaneously, we may look at the aspects that shape them, carrying forward the essential character which prepares them for future life.1  However, their abandonment binds them to obsolescence. Cities become graveyards of vacant structures, where fractured connections signal a loss of vitality. But even in vacancy, buildings hold resilient potential: the ability to restore memory and evolve from crumbling shells into spaces of legacy, connection, and community. Adaptive reuse and new intervention, then, take on new meaning. Beyond efficiency or technical sustainability, building on the built might counter the detachment that marks so many public and institutional environments made from scratch today. Honoring those who came before us also means honoring the spaces they inhabited, domestic and civic alike. These are places meant to hold us in our most human states: to rest, to learn, to heal, to thrive. In this context, the St. Charles Hotel in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, a vacant building notable for its architectural character and prominent urban presence, provides an exceptional opportunity to explore how adaptive reuse can respond to both subjective and collective memory and the need for care. At the same time, healthcare environments offer a lens for exploring how architecture can embody healing; a practice that goes beyond the building itself, toward mending and caring. Historically, hospitals functioned not only as places of treatment but as civic landmarks and social anchors during moments of crisis, fostering a shared sense of care and belonging. Contemporary facilities, in their pursuit of efficiency, are too often consumed by sterility, uniformity, and control, dulling the very vulnerability at the heart of healing. Adaptive reuse provides a timely response, transforming decay into continuity and sterile facilities into civic anchors that restore memory, care, and community. In this light, architecture becomes more than infrastructure, it becomes an experience and practice of belonging.

1.This research draws on David Leatherbarrow’s notion of relative permanence, which frames architecture as both enduring and mutable over time.

Bibliography:
Leatherbarrow, David. “Relative Permanence.” Journal of Architectural Education (1984) 72, no. 2 (2018): 212–15. doi:10.1080/10464883.2018.1496729.