October 25, 2021 | Watch the full talk now on Dezeen — Can an economy in which mental health is a priority be reimagined and reconsidered? How can we begin to build environments that cooperate with our need to improve mental health on a collective scale? On September 22, Therme Art presented the Wellbeing Culture Forum talk Art and Architecture as Healing: Shaping a Mental Health Economy as part of their activation at Design Miami/ Basel 2021.

The panel featured Lonneke Gordijn, Artist & Co-Founder of DRIFT; Precious Okoyomon, Poet and Artist; Torkwase Dyson, Artist; Franziska Kessler, Designer, Meditation and Wellness Professional; and Olaf Blanke, Founding director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in a conversation moderated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Mikolaj Sekutowicz that expounded on the re-contouring needed at the levels of policy, design, community engagement, environmentalism, and urban planning towards the construction of environments that heal rather than constrain.

The talk centered around Shy Synchrony, the installation presented by Superblue at Design Miami/ Basel, created by Dutch artist duo DRIFT and situated within Forest of Space, an elliptical site-specific pavilion designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. The work invited visitors of the fair to become active participants of their built environment by observing the soothing effect of the artwork's moving sculptures on their body signals through Therme Mind's new MYND technology, developed in partnership with MindMaze.

The talk took place inside the installation, so that the audience engaged with the work as the conversation unfolded. As Hans Ulrich Obrist remarked, “When we do panels, they need a special kind of architecture.”

By integrating users' natural responses into their environment, Shy Synchrony provided visitors with a mentally regenerative experience that allowed them to meditate on what it means to be a part of a whole. As we venture onward into the re-shaping of public life for the better, this collective sensibility will ensure that public spaces are built with inclusivity in mind. As Therme Art CEO & Curator Mikolaj Sekutowicz stated: “The exhibition itself is actually only a rehearsal. We cannot continue only to rehearse. We have to start to create also an environment where this rehearsal will become reality.”
 
“We have created an environment that is without nature. I think that we use technology as a learning tool to try and figure out to what extent we can respond to it in an emotional way. In a way, it can bring me the feeling and emotion that I’m looking for when I don’t get it from a specific environment. Therefore, I use it to create spaces that feel natural,” explained DRIFT Artist Lonneke Gordijn on the process of creating Shy Synchrony and its implications behind building and creating nurturing structures.

Poet and Artist Precious Okoyomon added: “There are few spaces in the world where you’re allowed to actually grab yourself for a moment of rest and peace because of the world’s constant ferocity and the way in which it moves. So, I’m always trying to think of these portal spaces that you can find yourself in the world, but also out of time.”

In speaking of MindMaze technology and its capacity to create wellness environments, Neuroscientist Olaf Blanke commented:
 
“We have used actual technology to reconnect with our body in a different way—using MindMaze virtual reality and other forms of technology to reconnect, maybe at a distance, with our body, with new forms of mirrors mediated through technology.”

Artist Torkwase Dyson refered to the inevitability of confronting current architectural preconditions that continue to hinder us in our pursuit of achieving wellbeing for all:
 
“Time only exists because of a relationship to heat and friction and movement. And if we start thinking about architecture, this idea of otherwise really brings us to things that are not necessarily about the measure of time, but the confrontation with the indeterminable.”
 
In speaking of our individual and collective wellbeing, Meditation and Wellness Guide and Professional Franziska Kessler emphasised the importance of daily breathing techniques and grounding practices, and how this mind–body alignment should be accessible in the infrastructures we create:
 
“When we have meetings in hostile environments, the energy in the room tends to exhaust itself. We often forget the fact that we all came together to create something in the first place. What we are planning on doing now, is to incorporate breathing rooms into our buildings.”
 
Mental health plays an intimate roll in the betterment of our lives, our bodies, and our planet. Without a healthy relationship internally, it will be nearly impossible to reflect empathy to others, and nurture our external reality. In thinking about the biological elements of the psyche, it is important to become familiar with the science of neurobiology and how it can contribute to more intuitive social and physical architectures. By absorbing the knowledge of scientific experts and applying it to our design and building processes, we can begin to observe how to better meet our collective’s mental health needs.
 
Watch the full talk and read Dezeen’s review of the event here.