One Dose of Architecture, Taken Daily: Building for Mental Health in New Zealand.
Doctoral dissertation, Victoria University, 2014.
The former psychiatric hospital sites strewn about New Zealand's rural landscape were the inspiration for Rebecca's PhD research. The asylum, as it was understood within the nineteenth century, was a constructed environment in which architecture and landscape were carefully articulated to aid the restoration of sanity. Architecture was thus considered a therapeutic tool; one of the few remedies available for the treatment of an affliction that carried devastating consequences. Compromise in the construction of asylums should not have occurred but, for a variety of reasons, it did.
Rebecca’s dissertation aimed to expand our existing understanding of official attitudes to mental illness in New Zealand through an examination of the architecture created for its treatment and containment. A careful analysis of this architecture revealed that the design agenda in New Zealand did not prioritise the curative needs of our mentally ill. Instead, issues related to political agendas, professional marginalisation, colonial propaganda and staff shortages compromised patient need. Many of these agendas were peripheral to the delivery of mental health care and resulted in design responses that conflicted with the attainment of ideal curative environments for mental illness.