Ehsan Therapeutic Village
In collaboration with
NEXT Office
Location
Damavand
Project year
2015
Program
Therapeutic Center
Area
44000 Sq.meter
Client
Ehsan NGO
The project is a therapeutic complex, targeting a disfranchised population that mostly suffers from mild to severe schizophrenia. Ehsan NGO will be running this facility among many others, and is very much interested in offering its constituency a “homey experience”. The challenge of design is to create a psycho-social therapeutic setting that is registered as a home as opposed to a hospital ward for its patients.
The design also needs to acknowledge the fundamental difference in perceptual and physical capabilities of patients that suffer from mild to severe psychological condition. This gradient of capabilities informs the multi-layer fabric of the complex. In the most outer layer, the inhabitants enjoy a full interaction with the outside world. As one moves towards the heart of the complex, social interactions become more regulated. The patients that are housed in inner layers of the complex will benefit from more professional care as they are in more severe psychological condition. As the patient’s condition improves, and his capacity to interact with the outside world is also further developed, he is relocated to outer layers and moves from shared rooms to co-habitation houses.
The project is located on a severe slope and as such, the formal configuration of the complex is very much informed by a series of platforms that negotiate the ground condition. On these connected platforms, typological variations of the architectural genome are strategically placed. The variegated roof creates a field condition that operates as a secondary landscape for the project.
