You Matter. Pavilion

The substance abuse issue in South Africa is in direstraits, the exact known cases are undetermined because as Simone Haysom puts it in her essay titled Living as a Ghost Do; “the government has never thought to count. What you measure matters, and when people don’t matter, they aren’t measured.” The result of substance abuse is twofold aside from the physical effects there are psychological effects that can arise – some of which include depressive & anxiety disorders and the possibility of developing bipolar. The proposed project is titled You Matter., it is a pavilion that adopts chronobiological light therapy and colour psychology. This treatment would work in conjunction with more conventional methods.

The You Matter. pavilion takes the form of a double volume rectangle that acts as a compressing space, it will be lit by natural light that shines through three different circular coloured filters; blue, green, red and yellow. The rectangle leads into a triangular space, which acts as the decompressing space and is lit by natural light that shines through a red coloured filter. In an effort to bring some familiarity into the space tactile elements have been introduced to mimic some of the rituals that are carried out in substance abuse but with a more positive result.