Having studied the Interior Design Honours programme at the Glasgow School of Art over the past four years I have been able to explore my continued passion of the way that spaces make us feel.
During my final year, I found a way to express this interest. My project focusses on providing a space for people to disconnect from the stress of daily life and reconnect with themselves both mentally and physically.
The Graving Docks in Govan are a rich piece of Glasgow’s ship building history and currently lay abandoned. The site is an oasis sitting directly on the edge of the River Clyde where one building still stands, Pump House Number One. To create a sense of unity between past and future, connection to water was vital. I therefore shaped this site into a Thermal Reconnection Centre- exploring the varying properties of water in the form of sauna, steam and temperature pools. Ensuring the legacy of this site lives on, I have ensured that it’s past leaks into every bone of my design process. This project injects life into the local area as well as widening this community to create a larger sense of unity throughout the city. This enables the purpose of reconnection to be; personal, communal and historical.
My main interest within my discipline has always been the ways in which users interact with space and the impact this can have not only on their experience but on their wellbeing within these spaces and beyond them. This project allowed a perfect form through which to express this thinking and I look forward to further investigating this marriage of psychology and space throughout my professional practice.
