Converter: Healing Through the Dialogue of Stone and Glass

What if a building could chart the emotional arc of recovery? Converter takes that question literally, organizing its entire spatial sequence around a phased journey from isolation to community integration. The programme serves two distinct groups: individuals with mental health disorders and mentally healthy residents seeking connection. Both move through tailored stages of interaction, beginning with introspection and guided therapy, progressing to independent cohabitation, and arriving at active collaboration. The architecture does not merely accommodate these phases; it narrates them through material, enclosure, and transparency.

Designed by Margarita Zykova, Converter was shortlisted in the Live Laugh Love 2020 competition. Set against the backdrop of Scottish vernacular construction, the project merges traditional stone masonry with a modern glass and steel structure to create a community center that doubles as a space of therapeutic transformation. Juror Eleena Jamil praised the approach, noting that "the use of vernacular forms and materials in the making of a contextual building suggest familiarity and friendliness," while fellow juror Juanjo Otero highlighted its "materiality very respectful of the tradition of the place."

An Exploded Programme of Recovery

The axonometric diagram breaks the building apart to reveal how each floor contributes to the therapeutic narrative. Wireframe roof forms hover above labeled zones: psychotherapist consultation rooms, workspaces for mental health professionals, volunteer areas, event zones, a concert hall, and a costume atelier for expressive therapy. Cafés, libraries, and recreation rooms populate the plan as sites of casual social interaction, deliberately placed to encourage unplanned encounters between the two user groups. The ground floor anchors the experience with a circular entrance hall that branches into an audience hall, a winter garden, and game areas. Each room occupies a deliberate position along a spatial metaphor that runs from "Conversion Start" to "End," mapping personal progress onto architectural sequence.

Stone Weight, Glass Openness

The section rendering exposes the project's central material argument. Rough-hewn stone masonry volumes, heavy and enclosed, sit alongside a transparent steel and glass structure that floods interiors with daylight. The stone symbolizes the weight of mental struggle: solid, protective, introverted. The glass represents social openness and the possibility of recovery. This is not ornamental contrast. The two materials define different experiential conditions within the building, guiding occupants from sheltered, private spaces into exposed, communal ones as they progress through the programme. The juxtaposition also roots the project in its Scottish context, reading as an extension of the local built landscape rather than an import.

The Auditorium as a Threshold Between Private and Public Life

The section drawing and first floor plan zero in on one of the building's most programmatically charged spaces: the auditorium hall with stepped seating and its adjacent entrance foyer. This is where charitable concerts, community events, and expressive therapy sessions take place, making it the point of maximum social overlap between residents and the wider public. Stepped seating creates a natural amphitheatre condition, encouraging collective attention and shared experience. The foyer acts as a decompression zone, a space where occupants can prepare for public engagement or retreat from it. Inclusive features like lifts and accessible toilets are woven throughout, ensuring the space functions as a truly universal gathering point.

Upper levels house private offices and therapy rooms, positioned above the public programme to reinforce the vertical separation between contemplation and communal activity. The layering is deliberate: more intimate functions sit higher, while the ground plane remains porous and socially active.

Why This Project Matters

Converter treats architecture as an active agent of social rehabilitation rather than a passive container. By structuring its entire plan around a phased therapeutic journey, the project gives spatial form to a process that is usually invisible: the slow, nonlinear work of rebuilding connection and self-sufficiency. The decision to design for two parallel user groups, those with mental health challenges and those without, rejects the institutional model of segregation in favour of guided integration.

Margarita Zykova's command of material symbolism elevates what could have been a purely diagrammatic exercise into something architecturally persuasive. The stone and glass duality is simple enough to read immediately but rich enough to sustain the full experiential arc of the building. In a competition field asking designers to consider wellbeing, Converter stands out for refusing to treat happiness as a surface condition. It locates it instead in the harder, slower work of converting exclusion into belonging.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designer: Margarita Zykova

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Project credits: Converter by Margarita Zykova Live Laugh Love 2020 (uni.xyz).