GRADUATION VINTER 2020
Mallory N. Buckner
GRADUATION PROJECT:
Empathetic Design: A Public Bath Centered Around User Experience Created with Layers of Information
PROGRAMME:
Studio 2B: Digital fabrikation og transformation
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
This project aims to design empathetically through designing a public bath. This thesis unfolds the fragments of experience that inform a process of design.
Empathy is relating to other people in a compassionate way. When considering how to design with empathy this project employs a method of focusing on users, understanding them, and creating a space that considers their thoughts, feelings, and bodily relationship to space as drivers in design. There is a focusing on the sensations of the body that enables space to exist and depicts its own potential to be inhabited. Research is conducted by visiting similar existing spaces and communicating by speaking, observing, and interacting with people as a designer.
User Empathy
Considering the body in space inspires this investigation into understanding the human form and the exchange between the body and architecture.
The start of design is with a reflection on the physical experience of being in a public bath. Eight public baths in Demark are visited for this project. Fragments of sensation from these encounters start every phase in the design process.
Empathy for Sensations
The intensity and fixation on wellness inspires the design of a set of hot and cold pools. The human body and experience define how space is measured and created, from jumping into a cold pool with a friend, to slowly heating your body. The sequence of experience allows people to move naturally between spaces. Surface comes into being because the human body will come into contact with it.
Empathy for Depth
Danish pools have a variety of depths that allow for different sensations and interactions. This inspires the design of space that brings these together in one place. Space is created from being immersed in water from the neck, hip, knee, feet and nothing to the transitions between these.
Empathy for Site
Fragments from the experiences of visiting Danish baths inform an approach to site. Here the idea of thresholds in experience is employed. The mindsets of users transition into a relaxing state as they approach the bath.
Empathy for Bath Design
Visiting the chosen site, Moesgaard forest, Denmark, added a new empathetic understanding to this project. Sensations and empathetic experiences from these visits further guide the bath building design, especially for how people relate to the pools. There is an opening and narrowing of space, inspired by Moesgaard forest, with a system of columns in the building that create a natural path through the building and offer different levels of intimacy.
Empathetic Experience
Visualized here are sensuous moments in the design, where every part of the design process comes together for moments of human experience.
Empathetic Design
Interactions with people and similar spaces inform the design process. The building design is composed based on moments and potentials discovered in studying the human body and how we relate to space.
Empathetic Design is used as a guiding light in this project. Every choice made is based on asking oneself as a designer, how would this choice lead to the best possible relationship for people in experiencing this moment?
Below you can find close up views and further details into the design process.
Empathy for the Bath Experience
The human form
Understanding conditions of space
Architecture empathetically curves to meet the body
The body and architecture
Desired Experience
Space measured by human experience
Slowly heating the body
Sequence of experience, 4 versions
Moments of the body in space
The body creates space
Inspired by water’s relation to the body
Fragments of sensations from Danish baths
5 moments of the body in water
Developing surface from the body
Empathy for the body in space
Physical model development of space
Choice of site inspiration
Bath experience starts before arrival
Forest path opens to view of Danish countryside
Countryside view, widening of path
Vertical narrow path experience
System of columns around pools with adjacent core of functional program
Columns extend high as if into the sky and serve multiple purposes
The Bath building fits into the site
Fragments of Danish bath materiality
Etchings of material qualities from the moment visitors remove their shoes
Internal experience of laps pool
Relaxing Hot pool with a slight view outside
Intense Cold pool plunge
Warm pool for social connection and revealing the outdoors
Connect with nature in Unobstructed view in outdoor pool
