Healing environments : architecture as therapy at the Mowbray Town Hall site

Includes bibliographical references.My design dissertation project is an investigation of Architecture as Therapy - a means with which to heal the environment (including peoples) as well as re-integrate them, especially those who have been marginalized. The design utilizes place-making design elements that would encourage their participation, by borrowing good ideas and examples from existing work/ projects. The project is focused on three main important key factors: * Fixing a site (through a strategic choice of site as urban rather than sub-urban). * Giving back the space to the people especially those who have been marginalized. * Proposing an architectural typology that seeks to fix both the site and people. This dissertation proposes an alternative; architecture as therapy, with the programme of a half way home to explore how architecture might reinvigorate Mowbray Town Hall site and operate with respect to pre-discharged patients / out patients from Valkenburg the state’s psychiatric hospital nearby Observatory. The building is not a psychiatric Centre such as Valkenburg psychiatric hospital but rather promote the idea of therapy, a means with which to heal urban environments and re-integrate people. Architecture as therapy provides the conceptual grounding for the project. The purpose of the work is not only focused on patients or to challenge notions of therapy processes and healthcare facilities but to address the on going ill-treatment of public urban spaces due to negative human behavior and also encourage positive human participation within their environments. Architecture as therapy suggests the potential to generate a new architectural typology with which the design of its spaces and elements within an urban public environment produce therapy and positive treatment of urban public spaces. Both the people and site will receive holistic treatment with a view to promoting recovery