Responding Objects – Poetic Design and Healing Spaces

Today's social climate and working environments expose us to excessive expectations and demands and more and more people are diagnosed with stress-related illnesses. My degree project is an investigation of poetic design, healing spaces and fatigue syndrome and the importance of adapted health care environments that strengthen treatment and recovery. My mother has fatigue syndrome, she has been ill for over six years, and she still has severe symptoms that probably never fully will go way. So, the purpose of this project is, on the one hand an attempt to get a deeper understanding of her situation, and on the other, to shed some light on this illness that is getting more and more common, especially amongst women. Research shows that spending time in nature has healing effects for those with mental illness. Using my definition of poetic design as a method, I have transposed qualities of nature into an indoor environment that reconnects to humans deep and genetic relationship to nature. I am proposing a new type of health care space with a much-needed holistic approach. Focus is on treatments such as mindfulness, basal body awareness and yin yoga as well as different kinds of therapy and activities in a space close to nature. A holistic space including a garden, an indoor space and a piece of furniture that are designed to respond to the non-measurable and invisible symptoms of fatigue syndrome.