Construction and Therapy | An Integrated Approach to Design-Build

This paper documents a semester long project; Construction and Therapy (C&T). C&T is a concept that merges design and construction with community engagement while taking advantage of the therapeutic nature of the shared experience of making one’s place in the world. C&T is based on the concept that direct construction can be a therapeutic experience at more than one level. While a number of cases of construction have been developed in the past by charities or NGOs targeting particular communities (for example war veterans) on a case-by-case basis, and the connection between shared experience of “making” in general and psychotherapy has been largely explored in counseling, putting together the two angles into one single practice-based scientifically-grounded model has never been attempted and can open an entirely new area of research. This integrated model of community-based construction hopes to include a new generation of professional architects as “master-builders”, assembling responsibilities that are currently spread among several different players in the conventional process of housing production, leading to a new way of producing the built environment.The process’s first major success was the completion of a small design build project over three weeks one year ago. The process involved using a pattern language rather than a design brief, and was built at full-scale using the design methods of Christopher Alexander.As the initial small project took place in the city center of Glasgow Scotland, it was subject to robust health and safety and building requirements, offering a glimpse of the challenges of moving design build from rural to urban environments. In addition to documenting the design build efforts and the pedagogical and research background of C&T, the research goes on to address, in the context of our ongoing efforts to establish an International Center of Construction and Therapy, how the capacity of design build education can be used through the vehicle of service learning to have maximum impact on the communities we serve, as well as the students that take part.The results of our initial project have shown success in building with a non-traditional process, success in engaging architecture students across disciplines of business, mental health, and design, and success in the integration of design build education with accreditation criteria. However we have also seen many challenges in fundraising, and project delivery.The paper will conclude underscoring the difficulties in design build education as Live Projects. Meaning the interaction with communities and charities and the additional coordination that is required by schools and departments of architecture for the projects to be successful.

Volume Editors
Sergio Palleroni, Ted Cavanagh & Ursula Hartig

ISBN
978-0-935502-94-7