Art For Healing: An Exploration of Spaces to Facilitate Arts for Therapeutic Healings

Mental health is a complex and ever evolving State of being that architecture and technology play an important role in. For women, some of the ways that depression comes about is when we go through life-changing events. Giving birth, having an abortion, sexual harassment and assault just to name a few. Women have a higher chance to have severe depression and relapsing. With major depression comes the higher rate of suicide. Centers of this type have been improving their designs, but in a way that still feels like the old. My interests lie in new forms of architecture related to psychology, such as neuroarchitecture and how the spaces can significantly impact our health without us being fully cognizant of it? As well as art specifically visual, sonic, and kinetic. I grew up with an appreciation for the arts, dancing ballet, playing multiple instruments, and always having an interested in photography. As well as exploring the program, materiality, and lighting. My proposal is to create a combination of spaces that encapsulate some traditional aspects of a psychiatric hospital but incorporating newer forms of therapy and spaces that can adapt into a new way of creating a therapeutic environment from when you enter the building to when you are receiving treatment whether it is inpatient or outpatient. Psychiatric facilities have been improving their design over the years, mostly in the interiors, with implementing gardens, common spaces with ample daylighting and acoustic privacy, attempting to create a form of “healthy architecture.