Found this today. It’s a mental health clinic in Japan, designed by Nendo. In their words,

The ‘doors’ that line the walls of the clinic do not open, and ‘ordinary’ parts of the walls open up into new spaces.

The consultation rooms are entered by sliding the bookshelves sideways.

The door at the end of the hallway opens onto a window; the amount of light in the hallway is controlled by opening and closing the door.

Rather than getting patients back to a ‘zero’, a neutral starting place, the traditional model for mental health care, the clinic aims to provide patients with something extra: a further richness in their daily lives that they did not have before starting treatment.

My first instinct when I saw it was that it felt like a huge artistic indulgence. And maybe a bit patronising too.

But on reflection, what our work on Buddy has shown, that it’s too easy to generalise about mental health conditions. People suffering from paranoia aren’t the same. All self-harmers don’t exhibit the same features. One individual might display a variety of disorders, in a short or long period of time. We felt with our work that the service would be more useful for some illnesses than others, but the truth is that it is more useful for some individuals than others, and anything else is a generalisation.

Which brings us back to Clinic Akasaka. As long as patients are made aware that this isn’t a ‘real’ space, but something to explore and interact with, I’m sure it’s perfectly fine. It just depends on what the purpose of the intervention is and the shared understanding between patient and professional.

Having said that, the carpet is a bit crazy.

via Dezeen

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Tags: architecture, clinic, Design, interiors, mental health