wishing well
2019 conceptual work
Wishing Well proposes a shrine to the communication of emotions. The proposition is intended as a pharmacy to our current cultural system, its stereotypes of success, and its goal-oriented competitive individualism. It is a provocation and an aspiration for improved intimacy, relaxation and wellness. The project plays with the folkloric term, used to describe wells where it was thought that a wish would be granted. This originates in beliefs that water deities in habited these wells, or that the wells themselves were gifts from god(s).
Soft murmurs of troubles, the recorded incidence of stress and anxiety in our world is increasing according the Global Risk Report. In Canada, there has been a 12% increase in the last 15 years, correlated with a decrease in while face-to-face conversation and empathy. According to CMHA, by age 40, 50% of the population will have experienced a mental disorder, and 14.2 billion dollars are spent on care and peripheral losses. Yet the topic of one’s own mental health is still largely taboo.
In architecture, we tackle external contemporary concerns, but we much less frequently look them in light of our own day-to-day practices. Within our community, our own internal habits, our own co-competitiveness contributes to the growth and capitalism we argue against. This issue of internal practices for which we should take responsibility relates to some personal observations.
What was particularly notable was that there is a sense of shame in this expression of emotion, a need to conceal it, to deny it, to anesthetize it. We tend to believe messy moments of emotion are moments of weakness, and we subscribe to a system that makes their discussion taboo because it contradicts a constructed idea of success.
At school, the places students can go to be alone are unwanted, leftover spaces: the exit stairs and the washrooms. They are overlooked places in the school that people do, say and experience private things. Yet, there is power in expression and communication and an annihilation of power in silencing, isolating or anesthetizing.
axonometric of adjustments
Wishing well takes for a basis the origins of the word pharmacy in the ancient Greek word “pharmakon”, revealing a historic inter-relation between” remedy,” “poison”, and “sacrifice”. For architecture to enhance honest communication, community and a process rather than product driven society pre-requisites sacrificing some self-pride, some hedonism.
The South Exit stairwell, currently an expansive, poorly lit, dirty and spray-painted space with a mechanical hum is chosen as the site of the intervention. Strategic changes are carried out:
1: carving apertures for sound and light
2: expanding the uppermost stair run
3: creating a theatrical circular void
4: installing a plastic + watery net
5: hanging the lower chamber
Once installed, the instrument inhabiting the bottom of the well accepts self-pride, whispers and coins as sacrifices. In the depths, there are also two changing rooms and a stage surface. These two lower rooms, adjacent stalls, permit selective degrees of screened and exposed expression, as well as shielded space for ablution. From under the instrument, visitors can also employ it to amplify their screams of frustration.
level 2: impromptu stage as a mesh over sound sieve
level 1: confessional space for masked expression
looking up
Coin-throwers typically climb towards the light before pushing their hands through the plastic water and releasing wishes. Their wishes chime as they are consumed by the instrument and are then expelled at the feet of those below. These chimes can be heard outside the pharmakon, irregular markings of stress time.
As many visit, an eerie sense of community may begin to form among the shadows traversing the space, dropping coins, whispering. One brave visitor might even have the courage to step atop the instrument’s sieve - onto a small stage, visible to all those circulating above - and start a larger conversation about change.
Until then, the pharmakon recycles wealth and desires as sound, beauty, and collective memory.
CC BY Maya Orzechowska 2019