Open Collections

Moss, Chloe

How can architecture actively participate in the healing process, not merely as a backdrop but as a transformative tool, a part of an integrative therapeutic system? While the built environment’s impact on physical well-being is widely acknowledged, its influence on mental health remains poorly understood. This project explores the potential role of architecture can have in facilitating healing from collective trauma. Drawing from contemporary insights into psychiatry and mental health therapies to examine both traditional healing spaces and understand alternative spaces, such as memorials, for their therapeutic potential. These informed an approach that argues: ritualised, context-specific architectural language can be harnessed to design spaces that both acknowledge shared trauma and facilitate its processing, creating environments that actively support healing. By embedding ritual into the fabric of the design, architecture transcends its traditional role, becoming a transformative tool in trauma recovery. Supporting the visitors’ healing journey by facilitating small, consistent, and intentional actions woven into daily life. Ritual informs every scale of the design, from the overall form to the smallest details. When architecture is imbued with ritual, intentionality, and context, it has the potential to facilitate an ongoing journey of healing, creating a space that is both reflective and transformative.

Text

University of British Columbia. ARCH 549

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89323

UBCV

Graduate

DSpace