Tuesday, 29 July 2014

Ideas to work on - ruins & the roof

[ideas after meeting with Bill this week]

Level 3 is now opened up to the sky & weather - except for the front quarter which still has the roof pitch as I want the building to still look like this from the front.
The next idea is to further break this up, perhaps to get a ruin aesthetic going...something falling apart. The metaphor being that your life has fallen apart, like this building.

Level 3 was where the doctors used to reside and the front room held a billiards table. This is now reversed in that the patients will inhabit this space now. The billiards table could be returned to where it originally stood.

A large open fireplace could extend down into the level below - this level is on the same level as the main dwelling spaces so could be the place they use when the weather is bad.
Previously this level was used first as the doctors residence (also complete with billiards table), then when level 2 was built it became an admin and reception area.

The roof - cover the individual scattered dwellings with a continuous roof, like a wing/cloud. The material should be translucent and seeming to glow when seen from a distance. This design will allow the individual dwellings to be seen from below (but slightly obscured). The roof form should extend down over to the ground in places, like a blanket.

The dwellings are obviously different to the ground floor, they are 'scattered' and not all lined up in a row. The logic behind the placement will be to allow sun and views into each bedroom, plus allow a central living space for each 5-6 bedrooms. Each cluster will include residents with similar disease etiology (eg. depressed/manic/etc), and will have different interior treatments reflecting this.


 
 The wing that previously held the surgical rooms, the operating theatre (for nasty things like lobotomies) and the medication and pharmacy rooms now will have a large heated swimming pool open to the air. The reflections from this pool will be seen moving across the walls when you're entering the building from the back stairway. These reflections will also be seen when walking the therapeutic walk.
...The steam rising up from the water obscures those in the pool so you feel secure and slightly hidden, not exposed, even when leaving the safety of the water the steam envelopes you and keeps you safe from prying eyes until your can reach the cave like changing room. The textures and materials around the pool deafen echos so there is no white-tile-public-pool-sterile feeling. This is more primal with darker colours, no slippery tiles but dark textured slate instead, like an expensive spa.

There are now stairs up from the therapeutic walk to the open courtyard on level 2.

...You walk up these stairs to go higher and higher, above the terracotta roof with views down onto this roof and the people below. You're part of this life but apart from it, observing but unseen (hidden behind the windows). Up in the treetops, the phoenix palms and the pigeons. The feeling of being up high, weightless and free from the concerns of the ground with it's therapy rooms, the café patrons and staff. There are nooks to curl up in on this level which allow views out over the entrance to Kingseat so you can watch people arrive and leave.

Precedents for the 'therapeutic walk'

The elevated walk is becoming one of the more significant elements of this design - the sensory aspect plus connections to nature and memories. Precedents:
The High Line -  Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and planting designer Piet Oudolf
The Garden Bridge - Thomas Heatherwick
NB. Thomas Heatherwick has been chosen to design a new Maggie Centre in Liverpool.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Personas (for the narratives)

Name | age | occupation/education | family circumstances | hobbies/interests | reason chosen as a resident (all had multiple admissions to acute care facilities)

Person with depression
Claude Van Zyl | 24 | studying for a degree in computer science at Auckland University but hasn't finished | mum/dad/older married sister all live in rural Waikato | music, watching sport, used to play the guitar, chess, science fiction | no stable friends to stay with, suicide attempts while flatting in Auckland

Person with anxiety disorder
Amber Jones | 28 | worked in a community library, trained as a librarian | mum and much younger brothers live in Christchurch | reading, swimming, walking her dog | did not want to return to Christchurch (worried about the earthquakes, cause of current anxiety disorder), no suitable friends in Auckland to live with, could no longer cope with living on own, brief time spent living on the streets

Person with bipolar/manic disorder
Jubilee Potini | 32 | didn't finish school, has spent much of his teenage and young adult years in psychiatric hospitals  | parents both dead, older brother is a patched gang member who lives in Gisborne | chess, mythology | homeless or living with friends who were not supportive

Person with schizophrenia
Abe Newton | 46 | trained as a landscape gardener, worked recently for a nursery | elderly parents live in Rotorua, ex wife lives in Auckland, no children | used to play touch rugby, reading | domestic settings exacerbated his condition

Ideas to work on (design) - opening up the original building

[ideas after talking with Bill today]

Extend the 'spa' idea..
Look at the original uses of the spaces and subvert or extend these:

  • Open up the wing used originally for surgery and medication as an indoor swimming pool - eg. take off the roof.
  • Add a waterfall over the rooms which were originally used as continuous water therapy (continuously running baths)
  • Make the wings used for seclusion into a library - old idea of seclusion was to be left alone with your own thoughts, but in a library you're alone with several thousand other's thoughts (on paper)
  • Kitchen - remains as is but perhaps becomes more 'alchemy' like?
  • Wards, sleep, treatment spaces - ? 
  • Dayrooms  - areas for socialising with family/friends
  • Admin areas
 

 Different treatments for
  1. the outside of the 'blanket of dwellings' at the back, the area where the path is - natural textures, details, interesting bits compared with the other side which will be smooth and appear to disappear into the sky when viewing from the driveway.
  2. the dwellings themselves, depending on patient etiology:
    • those with manic/anxious tendencies will be in a calming environment with minimal stimulus. They may be able to hear the water in the pool or waterfall, birds, no public noise or chatter
    • those who tend to be depressed will be in the opposite end where they may be able to hear chatter of other people, deliveries, normal sounds of everyday life
Present the building with paths of various people/residents/public winding through and associated various points on these paths with narratives, descriptive texts on what the person is doing there, what they're hearing and feeling.

The path becomes the central concept
  • find other precedents eg. like the High Line.
  • add in more haptic elements eg. water (waterfall, pool), fire (outdoor fireplaces, pits, gathering around these), air (up high off the ground, swing bridge)

Mise–en–scène

(ˌmē-ˌzäⁿ-ˈsen, -ˈsān)

= the arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production, stage setting

Bats in the Belfry

People downstairs, for example members of the public in the cafe, will be able to hear those above 'Bats in the Belfry' (phrase refers to craziness see here for a definition and origin of the phrase)

Tuesday, 22 July 2014

Brain mapping imagery


Based on an fMRI of a single subject, view from inside the brain showing areas of activation.

http://www.brainmapping.org/MarkCohen/research/Representing/index.html

Brain waves & anxiety


An EEG (electroencephalogram) records electrical activity in the brain usually via electrodes placed on the surface of the head.
They are usually used to look for seizure activity or other abnormalities but can also be used to map activity related to symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, attention and memory deficits.

Types of brain waves

Measured in frequency or Hz (cycles per second)
Delta 0.2-3.0 Hz - slow waves associated with very deep dreamless sleep. Predominant in newborns but should not be dominant in adults (excess delta waves can be associated with brain damage) when awake. Associated with the release of growth hormone, healing and the 'resetting' of your internal clock.
Theta 3-8 Hz - daydream like states, drowsiness, dreaming sleep (REM). Excess is associated with attention problems. Associated with the production of catecholamines. The state most receptive to hypnosis.
Alpha 8-12 Hz - (eg. lower wave pattern in image above) relaxed wakefulness, or light REM sleep. Associated with the production of serotonin (which modulates sleep, anger, aggression, mood in general). When you close your eyes, you start to produce more alpha waves.

  • Associated with the ability to recall memories, reduce discomfort and pain and reduce stress and anxiety.
  • Too little alpha wave activity can be associated with alcoholism, insomnia, anxiety.

Beta 12-27 Hz - (eg. higher wave pattern in image above) wide awake, mentally alert, concentration but also associated with flight or fight response, worry, anxiety.

  • Too little beta wave activity can be associated with attention problems, and learning disabilities. Too much is associated with anxiety, insomnia
Gamma above 27 Hz - associated with formation of ideas, language and memory processing, and various types of learning. Absent during sleep induced by anaesthesia.



This chart is typical of a seizure (cluster of spiking in the middle). Each horizontal line represents a reading from an electrode on the scalp. Each vertical column represents one second of recording time (showing pulses per second).

You can tell a lot about a person simply by observing their brainwave patterns. For example, anxious people tend to produce an overabundance of high beta waves while people with ADD/ADHD tend to produce an overabundance of slower alpha/theta brainwaves. Likewise, there are differences in brain wave patterns in patients with schizophrenia and those without (plus also in their siblings, see Nature research):

Researchers have found that not only are brainwaves representative of of mental state, but they can be stimulated to change a person's mental state, and this in turn can help with a variety of mental issues.

A normal healthy person's day will show oscillations from delta/theta (sleep) to alpha (awake but relaxed) then back to delta/theta. However, many people instead have a predominance of delta/beta waves if sleep is not good and daily life is stressful in general. Some treatments for stress and anxiety have focused on stimulating more alpha waves...

Entrainment

Entrainment is a principle of physics. It is defined as the synchronization of two or more rhythmic cycles. The principles of entrainment appear in chemistry, neurology, biology, pharmacology, medicine, astronomy and more. Brainwave Entrainment refers to the brain's electrical response to rhythmic sensory stimulation, such as pulses of sound or light. 

When the brain is presented with a rhythmic stimulus, such as a drum beat for example, the rhythm is reproduced in the brain in the form of these electrical impulses. If the rhythm becomes fast and consistent enough, it can start to resemble the natural internal rhythms of the brain (brainwaves). When this happens, the brain responds by synchronizing its own electric cycles to the same rhythm. This is commonly called the Frequency Following Response (or FFR). FFR can be useful because brainwaves are very much related to mental state. For example, a 4 Hz brainwave is associated with sleep, so a 4 Hz sound pattern would help reproduce the sleep state in your brain. The same concept can be applied to many other mental states, including concentration, relaxation and meditation.

Wednesday, 9 July 2014

Subverting the axial hierarchical frontality...

At the moment there is only one main entrance, one 'grand' entrance and yet traditional villas had impressive entrances and steps on both the front and 'back'.

Add stairs which are to be used only by the residents to one side of the main building at both the front and back of this block. Instead of entering at the front, you can instead walk around the building to another 'main' entrance at the back which leads directly up to the dwellings.

The public and staff enter via the main front entrance.

Stairs

Stairs can be used as platforms, viewing areas, seating. Stairs are a journey, a path. They involve activity and movement by the person using them (unlike a lift).