Transcendence Ooi Ju Ern Supervisor: Dr. Anna Johnson
My project began with a questioning of what architecture could do in providing a role to ‘exhibit’ or educate people about mental illness and supporting people with mental health conditions. This led to another question about cultural wellness of the city and how architecture and landscape could serve the community. Sited at T H Westfield Reserve, the project consists of a series of buildings dispersed across the park providing educational and community spaces. My research explores architectural language by re-examining the role of everyday objects which have impacted on my own selective mutism condition, looking into the present within the very stuff that is already there, to discover optimism within the contemporary and rethinking the alternative ways in which we can use it by transforming it into architectural work. This project is not about solving mental health issues, but a project that explores an architecture that begins with the every day and then evolves into the psychological-emotional effect of colour, space and form. Uniting the present with history, nature and architecture to create a place with a new value for people to gather. It uses architecture as a tool for the benefit of realization, using sublime as a profound moment of feeling its ability to see negative things in a positive way.