Eco therapeutic architecture
Swara Desai
Humans have difficulty relating the near and the far. Timothy Morton’s concept of the Hyper Object does a good job of capturing the trouble we have in conceiving the scales of time and space, which exceed our own immediate spheres. This is beginning to take a toll. The term Eco-anxiety was defined by the American Psychological Association in 2017 as a chronic fear of environmental doom. While this anxiety is grounded in a legitimate concern for the health of our shared ecosystem, it is exacerbated by a feeling of helplessness in the face of abstract statistics that portray environmental cataclysm as all but inevitable. This leads to a problematic dissociation between our everyday habits and the abstract data that measures and quantifies their larger impact. This project is an attempt to close this gap by spatializing our ecological footprint and rendering the bio capacity of the world as something experientially graspable. Building on Glenn Albrecht’s term Psychoterratic, the project then attempts to bridge the mental and the territorial to both overcome the epidemic of eco-angst and to more broadly speculate on new kinds of architecture for the Anthropocene.
Biophilic Typologies
the language.
Strategies for Biophilic design
Patterns of Biophilic design
Visual connection with nature
Presence of water
diffused light
Thermal airflow
Prospect
Non rhythmic stimuli
Biomorphic
Material connection
natural system connection
Complexity and Order
Mystery
Risk
environmental perception studies
Circulation studies to understand the form and nature of the spaces.
Linear
Random
Central Court
Open Court surrounded by walls
Criss-cross division with curved lines
Random division with curved lines
eco-circulation diagrams
Abstraction of spatial Perception
Radial division of the blocks
Grid division of the block
Random division of the blocks
Linear division of the blocks
ecological footprint
eco-librium diagrams.
These eco-librium studies begin by spatializing the ecological footprint of the average American and then experiment with ways of reducing this to our actual bio-capacity.
volumetric studies
Circle as function
Circle as a void or open space
Square as function
Square as void or open space
eco-subtraction studies
The studies done here are to understand the area available as Bio capacity and the subtracted area is the ecological footprint of an average American. The remaining is the deficit Bio capacity.
Barcelona
Street map of Barcelona
Subtraction of the built form
Subtraction of the open spaces
Queens Bridge
Queens Bridge New York
Subtraction of the built form and roads
Subtraction of the green spaces
Yankee Stadium
Yankee’s Stadium
Subtraction of the unbuilt spaces
Subtraction of the built form
Making Sense of Eco Therapy
1) adventure therapy 2) animal associated interventions (AAI) 3) animal assisted therapy (AAT)4) care farming 5) ecotherapy 6) environmental conservation 7) green exercise therapy 8) nature arts and craft 9) art therapy 10) social and therapeutic horticultural (STH) 11) counseling room 12) yoga and meditation
