ABSTRACT
We live surrounded by buildings. This chapter explores through the author’s own lived experience of both childhood trauma and psychiatric abuse how architecture has shaped those experiences. Through the use of narrative and poetry the author describes different types of building and space from the home to the University. Her madness was born by abuse in a pretty and nice little house and transformed by the hospitals where she was further abused into the righteous anger, which now informs her work. The guesthouse is offered as an alternative to hospital as a place of retreat, a place to reflect and a place of asylum.
