Science & Magic

science + magic = the architectural placebo for restoring sanity

• science = evidence-based design
• magic = haptic architecture & the philosophy of dwelling; the more spiritural, indefinable (often nonvisual) qualities of architecture

Patterns of evidence-based design applied in combination with the more intuitive 'magic' of sensory design and phenomenology/the philosophy of dwelling.

• I will define these patterns as qualities and relationships that can potentially be applied to any building to enable an 'architectural placebo for mental health', repurposing the Kingseat administration building  as a case study

Why Kingseat?

• Kingseat is a site of celebrity, it is infamous for bad memories of psychiatric care ((gather some quotes etc. on this)) so to overcome the stigma of ghosts of mistreatment will be no mean feat. 
• My patterns will be robust if they prove to work for this building ((how to 'prove' this though?))

Who, What, How?

Who
Rehouse the 'lost' population of patients with mental illness - those for whom there is no architecture, only the streets or a revolving door at the acute wards of psychiatric hospitals.

What
Repurpose an abandoned psychiatric hospital. The insertion will treat the occupants like fragile humans rather than dangerous animals, people rather than patients, family rather than renters. An architecture of normality and domesticity, but also an architecture of restoration. A place to dwell.

How
Cover the building lightly with a 'blanket' of dwellings

• clad with zinc or similar so that on gray days it merges into the sky. It does not stand out and perhaps is invisible when first entering the site - similar to the Moritzburg museum extension (see previous blog entry)
• the description of 'blanket' conjures up feelings of comfort and security, sitting 'lightly' above the heavy older building
• like a collection of nests - there are so many pigeons nesting in the nearby trees who live up high, this has been their home for generations