Holistic therapy: the antidote: art and architecture

Date
2012-07-05
Authors
Mafisa, Mantheki Karabo
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Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to investigate how art and architecture can inform healing or provide space and events where healing can take place. Mental health has been a debated topic to centuries and still today, the common being has not grasped its complexities that bound us all unique. The stigma created by human perception has hindered our knowledge which has resulted in segregation. The arts and art therapy have, over the years, been used to heal diff erent aliments such as cancer, mental illness, aids, abused woman and children, the elderly and have been successful in doing so as it heals across all ages and race. The question I pose is can architecture do the same? Furthermore, can architecture be used to create spaces that encourage or induce healing? The architectural intervention aims to re-integrate these segregated communities, specifi cally people with mental illness, back into society. The intervention aims to off er a place for rehabilitation, a place for healing, a half way house, a place for economic independence for those with mental illness and challenge traditional mental hospital model in order to de-stigmatise mental disability.
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