SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) >> HAPPE (High Street for Augmented Pleasant Personal Experiences)
This Project embraces the medical condition known as seasonal affective disorder (a form of depression triggered by decreased light levels in winter) and creates a series of interior urban light parks in forgotten or underused spaces surrounding the high street as a means to rejuvenate their currently failing status.
These light parks have been translated from the worlds biomes, bringing global environments into the global city of London. This is the new health institution, integrated into community and life and responding to local conditions, it does not separate itself from its surroundings with a facade.
Head wear for Augmented Pleasant Personal Experiences,
This is the result of rethinking the light box, the standard treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder. Together with Colour, this recreates the light conditions of latitudes with greater sunlight.
In order to integrate a new form of health design, it is important to observe the health of the city itself, indeed we find there is a direct relationship between centres of economic deprivation and percentage of people reported in good health.
Fibre Optic Sun Enhancing Device, This is an initial provocation whose shapes are based on the contours of economic deprivation which form a 4km high canopy punching through clouds and bringing sunlight back down through fibre optic cables.
An Image showing the tip of the canopy above the cloud layer observed from a plane.
London is a global city with people who have left behind their respective countries and environments. By bringing these back into the city and abstracting their spatial and luminous conditions, a network of urban light parks emerges along neglected high streets.
Tower Hamlets is one of the most deprived boroughs in London with many failing high streets, the high street being the essence of publicness which my intervention aims to be, a public intervention increasing the amount of open space which this borough in particular lacks.
An forgotten infill site is revived by placing an abstract rainforest where its light conditions are recreated using carefully designed light wells. There are five levels corresponding the to the five layers of the rainforest, each one with a specific light condition.
A look inside the spaces one would experience within the urban intervention.
On the Same site, a second intervention is proposed to show the strategic nature of the proposal. The Savanna proposal consists of two levels and the tall grass environment translated into a maze, its roof is more open than that of the rainforest.
A look inside the spaces one would experience within the urban intervention.
