Architecture as Therapy: Bloodletting: Beauty Spills Forth from the Wound
thesis
posted on 2022-03-01, 01:49 authored by Stephanie LiddicoatSelf harm is a plague, wreaking ugliness across the face of society, a
scar deforming what was pristine, swiftly spreading to become a gaping
open wound. The therapy techniques and facilities aiming to treat such
self harm conditions were discovered to be ineffective; the plague is
gaining momentum. This research proposes an alternative, an architecture
as therapy, as a case study with the programme of a bath house to
explore how architecture might operate therapeutically with respect to
women with self harm conditions. This architecture is not a housing of
therapy but rather a tool of therapy, an architecturalisation of
psychoanalysis and cognitive behavioural therapy. The architecture as
therapy inspires the shifting of paradigms, blurs and shatters
boundaries and preconceived notions to further individual thought,
reconciliation with the post harm body, and the development of new
awareness and identity. Through a process of provocation, engagement and
release the architecture as therapy addresses such notions as the
inability to communicate through conventional means, and ill-developed
identity and sexuality which hinder these individuals. Architecture’s
potential to offer therapy is further cemented through its links with
communication; it possesses a potential to generate new languages of
performativity and of the body through the design of its spaces and
elements. The inhabitant’s journey encompasses manipulations of ugliness
and beauty, the senses and performativity within an architectural
environment to elicit a therapy. Each of these notions is tested across
case studies and within the architecture as therapy itself, elicited in a
manner specific to these particular individuals. The architecture as
therapy can be viewed as a conceptual piece; the purpose of the work is
to challenge, to deconstruct preconceived notions of therapy processes
and healthcare facilities. Aligning with psychoanalysis, the
architecture is a conceptual vehicle with the purpose of pushing
boundaries and eliciting paradigm shifts. The architecture inhabits the
labyrinthine realm of the mind and as such has been represented in a way
where the conceptual ideas and relationships to psychoanalysis are
brought to the fore. Finally the architectural form is rendered
irrelevant; the body becomes the definer of space and of architecture.
The body becomes the beautiful, glorious in her own wounds, her own
ugliness. She may unleash her own plague, her autonomy, her liberation,
her sexuality, and her identity.