Jules Michio Stefelmanns
Heritage & Architecture
Image: Wesfort’s living room as a structure
Wesfort School of Hospitality
Values of former leprosarium Wesfort are revealed when designing for a purpose that continues the institution’s spirit while enabling current inhabitants to profit. This research-by-design approach reuses a set of contradictions by making Wesfort a hotel school. The institution’s once formal character is continued via the intangible habits of the doctor-patient relationship then and the student-guest relationship now. Students learn about hospitality in former hospital buildings, guests sleep in former patient rooms. The settlement’s informal spirit nowadays is given new potential by adding structures, not buildings; large living rooms enable students, guests and locals meet in the shade.