Design Study: The Oasis Conservatory - How can architecture positively impact our mental health?
ESa
Design Study: The Oasis Conservatory - How can architecture positively impact our mental health?
ESa
Awards Category : : Unbuilt
How can architecture positively impact our mental health? A design study intended to examine how architecture and the built environment can affect our mood.
How can architecture positively impact our mental health? A design study intended to examine how architecture and the built environment can affect our mood. As our team began this study, we envisioned a single “wellness center” with a variety of amenities and services within a large facility. Talking through the challenges, we began to realize a one stop shop had limitations. First and foremost, it would need to be a destination facility. Students would have to plan to be there. This goes against the very nature of the problem of being overstressed. We soon realized the advantages of multiple, smaller pavilions spread across campus.
• Single destinations could be organically placed around campus.
• If you needed a refresher, one of the pavilions would be close by. You could stop in on your way back to your room or headed to class.
• The smaller footprints allow development between buildings rather than a strategic master plan.
• Implementation can be piecemeal and phased across several years.
• Funding is easier to secure and each would provide a naming opportunity.
As a result, we created the following pavilions - the harvest pavilion, the exercise pavilions, the arts+music pavilion, the counsel pavilion, the respite pavilion and the social intersections pavilion.
In the pursuit to create architecture that promotes student wellness, there are many different strategies we can take. For this study, there was a desire to create pavilions that can touch many aspects of wellness. The reimagined “Wellness Wheel,” developed by Clarion University, establishes seven domains for wellness: physical, social, environmental, financial, spiritual, emotional and intellectual. Each of the pavilions address one or more of the seven domains for wellness for architecture to encourage coping in a healthy way.
Date of Completion: N/A
Client: N/A
General Contractor: N/A
Consultants: N/A
Photography Credits:
1 - The Respite Pavilion - creating a place to decompress and energize.
2 - The Counsel Pavilion - placing mental health in the foreground and celebrating the benefits of counseling.
3 - The Social Intersections Pavilion - relationships encourage, nurture and buoy us through challenging times.
4 - Public Counsel - Definition of public counsel space is articulated through a change in the ground plane. By sinking these zones, semi privacy is achieved. Multiple spaces are organized in an organic pattern to facilitate interaction and conversation. Wood louvers are offered on select spaces for an added layer of semi privacy.
5 - A place to reflect, decompress, refocus and nourish yourself.
6 - This Pavilion is designed to provide a safe place, and place for mental and emotional healing.
7 - The Arts + Music Pavilion - creating art to energize the spirit.
8 - The Respite Pavilion
9 - The Harvest Pavilion - The Quad: Because of its natural open space, which improves our physical well being, and as the center of campus activity, it encourages informal social interaction amongst the student body.
10 - A view into the dining space, as one is immersed within the gardens and farmland.
11 - The Counsel Pavilion - The primary zone for public counsel is flanked by a porous corridor that separates public counsel from private counsel.
12 - A typical hydroponics module, located on the façade of the Pavilion, acting as a living, learning program.
13 - The Exercise Pavilions - Architecture and exercise can encourage coping
in a healthy way.
14 - Architecture and exercise each yield varying levels of public and private use or
interaction.
15 - The Harvest Pavilion - A view from the gardens, crop fields and farmland.