Paces and Places of Healing
Parkitecturesupervised by Jeanne Gang
collaboration with Jungrok An
Location: Great Smoky Mountains
Date: 2020
Nature has always had a tremendous power to heal people. People often travel to the mountains to heal their minds and bodies by experiencing and enjoying nature. They escape the dense urban noise and pollution and allow nature to nurture them. Medical studies show that when patients have views of nature out their window, they recover better and more rapidly. Medicine even proves that the help of nature can help reduce high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, and more.
The current world has immeasurable anger and anxiety from numerous social issues, including climate change, stolen land, repressed history, and equity issues. While we all have so much to do, our project asks how nature could move from healing the person to healing society and how architecture could facilitate the interaction.
Our proposal, Paces and Places, creates a space for healing through inclusivity and equity. While the parks are free to enter, they have always had a high entry-level. Backpacking, fishing, horseback riding, and more all take a certain level of education, privilege, and cost to participate. We believe everyone should be able to arrive at the park regardless of who they are and be given the tools to learn and experience nature.
The design integrates landscape and architecture to create a visitor center that acts in the spirit of a hike, winding and branching out to expose visitors to diverse experiences with nature. The project is a series of different paces and places to highlight the immense biodiversity of the great smokies, facilitated by the healing of movement through nature.
