"Japanese designers Nendo have completed the interior of a mental health clinic in Akasaka, Tokyo, where none of the doors open and patients and staff instead move around the building by opening sections of the walls."
"By providing alternate perspectives for viewing the world, and avoiding being trapped by pre-existing perceptions, the interior allows visitors--and staff members--to experience opening new doors in their hearts, one after the other"
From Dezeen.com, read the original story here.
I admire both the idea and the production of this design. Whenever an interior architect plans a space, he/she's responsible of the people's external as well as internal place in the world. I don't find this fact get's the emphasis it deserves in design posts.
The places we sit, how we sit, the legroom we enjoy, and the view that we might be forced to look at, has a big part on defining our self worth, and the course of our day together with our moods.
Hierarchical thoughts behind design are still old-fashioned. Humans grow, structures don't without action. Every single human being is worth same. Interior design should reflect that. Why wouldn't a patient in a mental hospital deserve the same as outside, "healthy" people? You'd think that especially the more disadvantaged of us would need even more of richness in their lives, that they didn't have before. People in jail for example. Being locked in is bad enough or already for anyone. They don't need more discomfort to get better, but space to think.
In order to make the necessary change in our thinking, we need to change the way we shape our environments that keep us thinking a certain way. No-one is born equal, but were made equal by empathy.
Pictures from Dezeen.com
Link to the article
