Abstract:
Drawing on the evolutionary stages of living organisms and the design of collected attitudes and behaviours, this thesis, titled Morphosis of Social Conscience, challenges architecture’s relationship to depression by reinterpreting the way in which public wellbeing is delivered by the design of a new form of treatment, one that is preliminary and situated in the public eye. This research dissects social complicity concerning our prehistory of architecturally embedded stigmas and conventions relating to mental health treatment. A consistently high figure of suicides is recorded in New Zealand annually, and depression causes the highest mortality rates of young people in our country. Our public health system is in crisis; a lack of hospital beds, practitioners and unreasonable waiting times result in an unacceptably high annual death toll. The reality, though, is that depression cannot be cured by architecture. Instead, this thesis takes the position that social attitudes can be impacted by the design of special programmes and spaces. The proposal is a preliminary form of healthcare, one which takes presence in the city and is a new interface for mental health. By engaging the public in a visual and literal conversation of depression, it proposes nuanced attitudes surrounding the way in which we seek help, breaking stigma and empowering healthier social opportunities to receive treatment from friends, family and whanau. Materiality is rendered through human emotion; psychological and physiological traits are embedded within this anatomy of constituent parts. Between visceral institutional organs and supplementary appendages, a transparent skin communicates and conceals. This epidermal layer – sweating, blushing and blanching like human skin – presents an emotive dialogue in the heart of Auckland city. This organ attempts to relieve our strained public health system: shifting collective attitudes towards depression, destabilising the collective desire to conceal and remove mental health issues from our social conscience.