Living With Buildings: On Health and Architecture

Author Iain Sinclair will be speaking about his new book Living With Buildings: On Health and Architecture and how it engages with the context of residential recovery sites such as Bethlem and the Maudsley Hospitals.

The conversation of how buildings affect our sleep, work, social life and even how we breathe is poignant when considering residential recovery and its potential to also heal or harm us.

This event encourages reflection on the current and historical nature of mental health hospitals and asylums and the day to day encounters of staff and service users working and living in them. How do institutions like Bethlem and the Maudsley create a temporary home for those on site?

21st January 2019 is claimed to be Blue Monday, a name given to a day in January (typically the third Monday of the month) said to be the most depressing day of the year. The formula uses many factors, including: weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action.

In conversation with MoTM Curator Kate Tiernan with time for audience Q&A and following book signing.

About the Author

Iain Sinclair was born in south Wales. He went to school in the west of England and university in Dublin. He lives, walks and writes in east London. His books include 'Downriver' (winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Encore Prize), 'Lights Out for the Territory', 'London Orbital', 'Hackney', 'That Rose-Red Empire', 'American Smoke' and 'The Last London'.