Juliet Huddart-Ouabdesslam
Inspiration, for me, comes from the ability of architecture to evoke a positive emotional response in people. It is my ambition to create spaces that enhance people’s lives while being sustainable and contextually aware.
Inspiration, for me, comes from the ability of architecture to evoke a positive emotional response in people. It is my ambition to create spaces that enhance people’s lives while being sustainable and contextually aware.
We are currently living through an evolutionary misalignment. Where our human bodies, designed by nature, do not match the modern world. Based in Putney, London, the Eudaimonia Institute proposes a retreat for individuals to realign with nature and their evolution. The scheme acts as a filter, of the water of Beverly Brook, our modern comforts, and the human soul, through purification rituals and an experience of the wild, to reach a eudaimonic human state.
Eudaimonia, meaning human flourishing, stems from ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks believed that to achieve eudaimonia one must experience discomfort, to live as one was inherently intended to live. This dialogue with discomfort is a state that we have lost, limiting human development. In order to reach an evolutionary alignment and eudaimonic human state, we must challenge the status quo and discomfort must be reintroduced.
The ancient Japanese purification ritual of Misogi, meaning ‘water cleansing’, is performed by washing the entire body in cold water. Today, the ritual is performed to purify the mind through physical and mental challenges in nature, with the aim to wash away the contamination caused by modern comforts.
The scheme will facilitate this, acting as a filter and creating a journey; a metaphor; through Misogi purification of the human state, modern comforts, architectural atmospheres, and the water of the Brook. Leading to a place where elements of our comfort are filtered, so only that which remains is significant.
The architectural concept of a Eudaimonia Machine has been utilized to allow individuals to progress on a spiritual journey over 24 hours, through five stages, from high interaction and light, to deeper levels of contemplation and darkness. Generating an understanding, practice, and appreciation of nature and the evolutionary mind. Leading to a personal transformation through an experience of discomfort and the wild, to reach a eudaimonic human state.
Through this evolutionary alignment, with an enhanced understanding, individuals will be better equipped to live aligned with their evolution. Gaining agency over their own lives and health, empowering them to make informed decisions. This will generate a realization that the way the modern world is built, is not aligned to human nature or best interests, but it can be.
Critical reflection and re-design to improve daylighting, accessibility, and atmospheric qualities of P2.
Putney’s new public boat club shares space with the existing by inhabiting the voids.
A competition winning entry to extend the Nottingham Contemporary with a new studio space, reviving the Trent Canal.