[The] Ship of[/for] Fools: A Folly[/Manifesto] for Mental Health

‘The Ship of Fools navigates, meanders through campus. It’s not set in one place; it’s like a suitcase, it can [easily] travel. Carried Flown [in] by martlets, its light structure veils over the institution.’

Through the ship of fools, this project has navigated a project close to my heart, on mental health and architecture, with the aim of celebrating ‘madness’ rather than confining, punishing, stigmatizing mental health struggle.

The research questions have oscillated around, “What does it mean to have a safe space, and how does one design for it? [How can we strive for inner peace in [through] our environment; to be able to feel comfort[able] wherever we may be?]”

The ship of fools is a powerful metaphor, folly, manifesto for communicating that we’re all fools; that we’re all going through it.

In “Madness and Civilization” (1961), Foucault describes how individuals who were considered mentally unfit were shipped onto boats into the ocean during the Middle Ages, and compares this treatment to that of the institutional model of the 19th century: “prisoners in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads [...] behold it moored now, made fast among things and men. Retained and maintained. No longer a ship but a hospital.”

This project has speculated on the use of fall leaves as a material case study for designing for mental health. Inspired by Pallasmaa in “The Eyes of the Skin” (1996), the design of the ship of fools “[wishes] to express the significance of the tactile sense for our experience and understanding of the world, [and our] sense of self, strengthened by art and architecture, [that] allows us to engage fully in the dimensions of dream, imagination, and desire. [...] Creative work calls for a bodily and mental identification, empathy and compassion.”

Master’s final self-directed research project 2022-2023 Ping Kwan Lau Prize in Architecture Advisor David Theodore

A Timeline Collage of [How] Mental Health [Has Been Addressed in(/by) Society (Societal Culture) (in Recent (Modern) History] / An Annotated [A Collaged] Bibliography

Collage became an important (visual) medium or technique from the beginning of the [this] research project(, when it came to (starting with) visualizing an “upto-date” history of (how) mental health (issues have been dealt with(; depicted) by society (and societal culture)). [Architecture, after all, is a cultural practice.]

In the process of layering information, it became clear the stark contrast between the institutional model to treat mental illness (that first emerged in the nineteenth (19th) century, (with colossal(,) campus-sized buildings made to last forever,) (which pre(-)dated (inspired) the (modern) hospital,) and that of exile during the Middle Ages.

The theme of “folly” or rather (“)praise(”) of it (folly) was widespread during this time (period) [the Middle Ages]. French philosopher Michel Foucault writes about this (cultural) phenomenon in his book on “Madness and Civilization(: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason)”(, (“Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique” in French,)) published in 1961(, and criticizes [the] institutions [of psychiatry and psychoanalysis]).

The first chapter is titled “Stultifera Navis”, Latin for “Ship of Fools”, and refers to a literal ship (or boat) people considered mentally ill were stowed (away) into; “bound fast at the infinite crossroads”[; but “[b]ehold it moored now, made fast among things and men. Retained and maintained. No longer a ship but a hospital.”1

A Timeline Collage of [How] Mental Health [Has Been Addressed in(/by) Society (Societal Culture) (in Recent (Modern) History] / An Annotated [A Collaged] Bibliography

More related to the beauty seized behind madness through this collage; Foucault similarly writes, “[w]e owe the invention of the arts to deranged imaginations;” “[m]easureless madness, which has as many faces as the world has characters, ambitions, and necessary illusions”; “[m]adness is here, at the heart of things and of men [individuals; people]”. Take Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier(,) for instance, who wrote and directed “Melancholia” (2011) [; who produces (controversial but(/yet)) (deeply) moving (complex) works ((tackling) (touching) on mental health (~issues)(, inspired by their own (psychological) struggles with mental health.] [The word ‘melancholia’ has been used since the time of the ancient Greeks to describe feeling intensely sad and hopeless.]2 [The splendor of their cinematic imagination of mental struggle through mental struggle showcases the complicated (complex) beauty behind this subject (topic)(,) [that] sways (swings) (swaying) (swinging) between terror and delight.]

Titicut Folies, dir. Frederick Wiseman

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest Melancholia dir. Lars von Trier

Carla Yanni, The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2007

A Timeline Collage of [How] Mental Health [Has Been Addressed in(/by) Society (Societal Culture) (in Recent (Modern) History] / An Annotated [A Collaged] Bibliography

Erving Goffman, “On the Characteristics of Total Institutions”, reprinted in Asylums

Esther M. Sternberg, Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-Being Harvard University Press, 2009.

Ian Hacking, Mad Travelers: Reflections on the Reality of Transient Mental Illnesses. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995.

Joy Knoblauch, The Architecture of Good Behavior: Psychology and Modern Institutional Design in Postwar America

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Moran, James E. and David Wright (eds.). Mental Health and Canadian Society: Historical Perspectives Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press

Philippe Pinel, Traité médico-philosophique sur l’aliénation mentale

The knowledge system, like many other systems in modern society, has become more and more specialized. It has become difficult to understand the foundation on which we base our daily life and work upon, and easier and easier to overlook this issue itself.

As Jorge Luis Borges intriguingly wrote in his short story "Funes the Memorious", when all the detail is presented in front of us, we lose the ability to think and imagine. Because according to him, to think is to forget; to generalize. Ironically, despite the amount of information we have, modern day life is essentially opaque.

The notion of nearby is also disappearing. What we try to do, through the lens of this project, is to explore how a modern library situates itself in such premise.

Anecdotal Mapping Timestamps

Ground floor plan where knowledge in its diverse forms exists as is, in ‘chaos’, for spontaneous learning

Third floor plan where knowledge is strictly divided between each room containing a different condition fully adhered single ply roof membrane

150 mm rigid insulation

12 mm glass-fiber-reinf. gypsum board

38 mm corrugated steel decking double glazing

10 mm toughened glass + 12 mm cavity + 2 x 10 mm laminated safety glass suspended ceiling: 16 mm plasterboard

130 mm screed, reinforced, polished

76 mm corrugated-steel decking

W410 x 173 steel I-beam vapour barrier

300 mm batting thermal insulation

12 mm rockwool mat

16 mm gypsum board

130 mm screed, reinforced, polished

120 mm thermal insulation

300 mm reinforced concrete

100 mm rigid insulation vapour barrier

600 mm concrete foundation wall

100 mm batting insulation

16 mm gypsum board

2 mm aluminium floor deck cladding

W410 x 46 steel I-beam steel grating, galvanized solar blind accordion door: double glazing panel size 1400/5000 mm

Correlational Studies of Cases in Montréal

Total confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people as of June 8, 2020

Overabundance of Parking Lots

Surface lot Garage

Boosting

Local businesses

COVID-19: A Wake-up Call to Lost Spaces

The Parking Lot: A Case Study

Finalist Project of theARK_ International Design Competition

The local economy has been strongly affected by the current pandemic. Cities can no longer depend on tourism and inhabitants are too anxious to risk going out on the streets. For this reason, points of public space are established in the different neighbourhoods of Montreal in this proposal, moving the masses away from the center of the city. Our project recognizes the need to bring a feeling of security by dispersing people in the dense city, and preventing large gatherings in the downtown core. By providing new public interventions in neighbourhoods outside of the city center, this project addresses the specific needs of each region while also encouraging people to spend locally, boosting the local economy. In addition, a presently abandoned space is identified, one without a future and with ease of reuse: the parking lot.

Employing the simple and commonly found materials of the metal scaffold and the wooden pallet, our proposal works to establish public spaces built by the people based on their own needs and desires. This standard material makes it easy for objects to be reusable and readaptable.

P3: Recreational Space grow, multiply delaminate, ripple extend, veil cut, hollow hover, cloud enclose, circulate

This parking lot is located in Plateau Mont-Royal, an area of Montreal known for its vibrant art culture. The region is one of the ten urban neighbourhoods in Canada with the highest concentration of artists. Out of 7,560 workers, 605 are artists, for an artistic concentration of 8%. Using an abandoned parking lot, this exhibition space provides a means for local artists to display their work at a time when their field is hit hard by the pandemic.

In the heart of Saint Laurent, a neighbourhood with a population of which 20% are youth (0-14), this parking lot intervention provides a recreational space for children to enjoy.

This lot located in Pointe Ste-Charles, one of the lower-income neighbourhoods of Montreal, is repurposed into a socially-distanced performance venue. It can benefit the local cultural community, which is well-known for its live theatre performances that have been negatively impacted by the pandemic.

Numerous news outlets have reported on Montreal restaurants struggling to survive during COVID-19 due to social distancing requirements greatly reducing their capacity. Nearby vacant parking lots can be repurposed to attract customers to partake in these local businesses. They can order from the restaurants, and come eat leisurely on the elevated platforms, safely socially distanced from one another, and watch a movie projection on one of the many vacant walls surrounding parking lots, like this one here found in Old Montreal.

The first part of the studio (steps 1.1. to 1.4.) consists of short exercises in which formal systems (systems of shapes and relations in two- and threedimensional space) are defined and iterated to generate architectural conditions. These exercises are an introduction to generative drawing, visual computation, and formal interpretation.

In the second part of the studio (steps 2.1. to 2.3), the formal system responds to an urban context to be abstracted. The proposed architectural intervention exhibits formal resolution with regards to the defined set of architectural priorities and intentions emergent from the moiré pattern.

The manipulation of moiré through physical modelling launched the spatial study of the pattern, generating culling strategies for three-dimensional design. The physical models were made of mesh, grid-like material in order to create interstices of lines to generate the moiré pattern. Through photography, their behaviour is captured and studied through cause and effect verbs, and their diagrams.

Mapping

In what kind of environment can the moiré thrive in?

The McTavish Reservoir

To unknowing passerby, the McTavish Reservoir is but a sports field for the McGill campus, its current program on the surface. After all, the land is relatively flat with almost no vegetation on it. At its perimeter, however, rests a natural cliff with rich features that redeem the relative plainness of the former. The cliff stands tall, and even taller with the trees and plants that grow from it; the whole at least 20 metres high. It therefore receives a lot of sunlight. Moreover, water oozes from the cliff, and glazes the rocks. The entirety feels organic, and self-sustaining.

Similarly, the site has features that could sustain the moiré pattern. For moiré to take into effect, the pattern needs a simple background that is not busy. The interstice between lines cannot be overcome by abundance of things. So, the plainness of the site is actually helpful; and the richness of the cliff provides a simple yet provocative background to gaze at.