On the affect of therapeutic spaces: An autoethnographic study of affect and architecture of therapy.

The architect-self is inevitably expressed in the design process and architectural outcome; often, in more nuanced ways than is admitted. Whether it is a world-renowned architect (Pallasmaa, 2005, p. 73; Souto De Moura, 2019, p. 243-244; Zumthor, 1998, p. 9-10) or a student of architecture, designers intuitively draw on personal spatial experience and knowledge in their design decisions (Van Schaik, 2008). To further explore the architect-self in the design process and architectural outcome, this research focuses directly on autoethnography as a design research method. Through a series of personal design speculations into therapeutic space, architecture’s reliance on the architect’s self is revealed and intensified, posing questions about the connection between designer and space.

Autoethnography is “research, writing, story, and method that connects the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” (Ellis, 2012, p. 49). It is a research method that uses the researcher’s personal experience to describe and analyse social and cultural beliefs, practices, and experiences, and interrogates the intersections between the researcher-self and society through reflective practice. It carefully balances academic rigour, emotion and creativity, and strives for social justice (Denzin, 2014, p. 25). Also, the aspect that relates explicitly to architectural research is that autoethnography assumes a mutual relationship between the audience of stories/inhabitants of space and the researcher/designer that creates it, compelling a complex response.

The research sets a refined scope within the topic of ‘therapeutic architecture’ to investigate autoethnographic methodology in architecture research. The general aim of ‘therapeutic architecture’ is a promotion of one’s ‘health and wellbeing’, which is an extremely personal and private matter, yet socially determined. In this context, autoethnography provides a unique approach to the topic. This research addresses the underexplored personal and social aspects of architecture, using therapeutic space as a vehicle and autoethnography as a method.

The research methodology was adapted to include both autoethnography and “research by design” (Roggema, 2016, p. 3) methods. First, the author’s therapeutic and anti-therapeutic spatial experiences were collected as data. Reading Hermann Schmitz’s New Phenomenology, his central concept of the felt body, the ‘vital drive’, was applied to determine therapeutic (‘corporeal expansion’) and anti-therapeutic (‘corporeal contraction’) (Schmitz et al., 2011, p. 245-246) nature of experience. Expanding on the traditional autoethnographic method, in addition to written vignettes, data was collected in various modes including physical models, audio and video recordings, photo collages, found items, and more.

Following this, data analysis revealed themes and elements that composed therapeutic spatial affects as perceived by the author, bound into design experiments. Analyses were conducted through narrative and contextual investigations, locating the personal spatial experience in the broader local, social, cultural, and political frameworks. It was an important step where autobiography became autoethnography; it explained and critiqued the conceptual frameworks of the author’s experience. The generated insights became the basis of a series of therapeutic spatial design interventions. This methodology resulted in the design process and architectural outcomes being taken beyond their inherent autobiographical nature and towards a close understanding of design’s situated context.

The thesis is a proof-of-concept of employing a qualitative research method – autoethnography – within the discipline of architecture, where the method was previously unattempted. Using the objective of understanding therapeutic architecture and its affects to demonstrate the new, innovative methodology, it argues the need to reconsider the relationship between architectural design practice and therapeutic affects. Autoethnography in architecture compels the architect/ researcher/author to acknowledge and investigate the architect-self earnestly, and subsequently, the architectural design process could become a lens to understand and critique its social and cultural context and produce design outcomes accordingly.