Eric Decumutan

Advisor: Eduardo Aquino

The Suffering in True Nature: An Architecture of Mental Healing for a Technologically-enhanced Human Society
Map of Hong Kong in the year 2100
Map of Hong Kong in the year 2100
Building site in new-city context and relation with Siu Ma Shan mountain peak
Building site in new-city context and relation with Siu Ma Shan mountain peak
Collage of the transitional aesthetics and atmosphere from ‘tech-city’ to a therapeutic ‘nature’ space
Collage of the transitional aesthetics and atmosphere from ‘tech-city’ to a therapeutic ‘nature’ space
Front elevation of the Morta Wellness Centre (Mental Health Institution)
Front elevation of the Morta Wellness Centre (Mental Health Institution)
Interior render of the entrance and reception; on-looking towards a mountain peak directly ahead
Interior render of the entrance and reception; on-looking towards a mountain peak directly ahead
The new fuel-cell energy city which sits atop of old Hong Kong and the sea level rise
The new fuel-cell energy city which sits atop of old Hong Kong and the sea level rise

The Suffering in True Nature: An Architecture of Mental Healing for a Technologically-enhanced Human Society

It is the year 2100, sea levels have risen and the people had no choice, but to elevate themselves in the polluted air and in a new built city out of technology.

Asian coastal cities, such as Hong Kong had embraced technology into their bodies so that they are able to breathe, but must charge their enhanced lungs with fuel-cell energy in order to survive. This has taken a step towards a transcendence from nature, physically, and mentally. Consequently, the minds of these individuals are experiencing an affect of displacement from a world they know as more natural than any other environment.

[an imbalance between mind & body from the affects of leaving true nature]

Jon, one of the many people who were the last generation to be born on natural Earth is experiencing displacement upon arrival in the new city and because of his prolonged depression and near-developing psychosis, he is now referred to a mental health institution called the Morta Wellness Center.

The facility, located within the polluted range of elevation, performs experimented treatments using psychoactive drugs to determine the subject’s formal diagnosis through the EDM (Emotional Dream Machine), a super computer which records and measures the individual’s core traumas from their dreams and is then utilized through metadata as a personalized roadmap for their specific healing with nature. Although, many others may hold severe mental illnesses, others could also have access to this facility to satisfy their missed-experience with true nature.

Eventually, Jon meets a particular individual who is also mentally ill, and so he seeks a type of connection which he had desired long ago. Not knowing his true cause of depression, he willingly follows along her side through their treatment in the institution.