Breaking the stigma around mental health

Overview

Our social behaviour is a direct projection of our mental and physical wellbeing, it goes without saying that it directly impacts lifestyle, livelihood and eventually the prosperity of an individual. The social stigma that exists with mental disorders has led us to a scenario where there are 300 million people estimated to be affected by depression, which is curable if identified at early stages. It is now a common mental disorder and one of the main causes of disease worldwide. The onset of digital ease and the presence of social media in the past decade has helped connect people in the virtual realm. 

Social Isolation, loneliness in a fast-paced urban lifestyle are a few reasons that have made depression a prevalent disease especially among the youth. The onset of digital ease and the presence of social media in the past decade has helped connect people in the virtual realm. 

How do we move ahead to a more physical solution and use design/infrastructure as strong tools for the same?

Can a community based architectural intervention provide a space for having an open dialogue among the people? How can design integrate spaces for therapy and counselling on a larger scale that breaks the social stigma against mental disorders?

Brief

To break the social barriers associated with any mental health disorder an infrastructure needs to be built. It would encourage the patients to come out of their shells and interact with others going through a similar scenario in an open platform. This would allow them to seek help from trained professionals and undergo treatments and therapy. Such interventions would also enable a cohesive surrounding to reduce social isolation and loneliness faced by many (age disparity, population scarcity, fast-paced urban life etc). 

How will architecture act as a medium to connect people and build a safe environment for open conversations and solutions around mental health and its cure?

The challenge was to design a small scale community therapy centre exclusively for people suffering and coping with deteriorating mental health.

Unyt launched a competition called Live Laugh Love to find a physical solution for breaking the social stigma around mental health and build a permanent infrastructure for the same. 

The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows : 

Juanjo Otero, Architect, MOL Arquitectura, Spain

Eleena Jamil, Principal, Eleena Jamil Architect

Marco Dell'Agli, Project Director, MC Architects, Italy

Some of the Best of competition projects are:

Winning Project: Chess Encounter

By: Wenhui Tian, Mengya Huang, Rui Yang & Hanlu ShangGuan

Description: The project recognizes the importance of personal, group and collective spaces and provides a gradual change from one to another. The design attempts to gradually evaporate an individual’s self-imposed boundary and uses the game of ‘flying chess’ as an inspiration to achieve that. There are many quadrilateral lattices and a starting and ending point in a conventional sense. Multiple intersection points planted along the route provides an opportunity to change the horizontal circulation. The goal is to provide different events, activities and experiences as the user changes the movement pattern. The possibility of encountering new activities makes the entire process more engaging, interactive and fun.

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Runner - Up: Safe Oasis

By: Yulia Smirnova

Description: This is a place with an inclusive and friendly expression to serve social interaction and privacy at the same time. I wanted to ensure that visitors to this place first of all feel safe, feeling safe is a very important part of people's mental health. I have tried through my building to ensure the balance of body and soul by spaces with different function.

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 People’s Choice: Live Laugh Love Center

By:  Alexander Chudakov

Description: The idea behind my decision is that there was a need to create a place where people and their loved ones could take up a helping hand and get both advice and active help in a critical situation. In accordance with who regulations, it was decided to host a small hotel for people seeking assistance.

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Editor’s Choice: Public Center For Expression

By: Baptiste Fichet  

Description: My project doesn't try to answer perfectly to the problem of depression. But it tries to help people to think about it in a sensitive way. It plays with our perception, our efforts and ours interpretation of things. The project tries to give a different approach, having a lot of freedom for the user, for him to feel that he is the master of his choices.

 

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Editor’s Choice: Live Laugh Love

By: Лёля Жукова 

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Description: At all times, architecture has had a great impact on the spiritual and physical state of the person. Due to the implementation of different rigid forms the construction can cause different associations. In this project we wanted to develop soft and natural outlines, which visually resemble the form of clouds.

 

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Discover the full results here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/live-laugh-love/entries

Discover the design brief here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/live-laugh-love/info/about

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