Precedent #2: Anishnawbe Health Toronto

I chose the Anishnawbe Health Centre in Toronto, ON to be the second precedent for my thesis project. This building represents the place for healing and community support for native as well as non-native residents of Toronto.

The building has a rectangular form with large windows facing Queen Street East and smaller windows facing South. The structure also features the skylight built in the approximate middle of the roof. The sun shines down into the interior of the building allowing the daylight create the atmosphere for healing and recuperation.



There is a mosaic representing the four directions of the Earth placed on the floor below the skylight (1).



The building features an interior structure that creates separate units for the health practitioners and their patients. The units are organized on the ground level leaving about 8' open space above. There is an upper level that has additional offices and a porch (an outdoor open space). The spiral staircase leads down into the basement level where there are more offices and rooms.








(1) The pictures with green border are borrowed from www.aht.ca website with permission from the Management Department at the Anishnawbe Health Centre.

Inspirational Precedent #1: White City

For the first precedent I have chosen the "White City" that was built as part of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1983 and held in Chicago, Illionis, US. The exposition celebrated 400 years since Columbus' arrival to North America and attracted participants from 46 countries. Nearly 25 million visitors attended the fair to look at the most recent wonders in science, industry, art and architecture. The buildings were designed using the principles of European Classical Architecture: symmetry and balance. "The fair had a profound effect on architecture, the arts, Chicago's self-image, and American industrial optimism"(1).


The White City, also established as the Court of Honor, featured new ideas of electricity being brought forward in front of the public by physicists, scientists and innovators of the time. One of the main guests in the "White City" fair was Nikola Tesla, by then world-famous inventor in electricity.


Tesla demonstrated his high frequency equipment and had tables presenting glowing phosphorescent tubes and lamps. The inventor was blowing glass right at the event and created tubular signs such as "Welcome electrologists!" (2) Day after day Tesla was surprising the guests of the fair by illustrating the work of alternating currents which he discovered. He also presented the public with the first ever synchronized electrical watch. He was also shocking his public when he would turn himself into the shaft of light that was created as a result of electrostatically excited molecules. Such demonstrations attracted the people of medical practices and talks were held about using electrical currents in therapies. Other countries, France, for example, were exploring such possibilities as well with studies and application of electrical currents in diathermy, the leading method in electro-treatments. However, it was Tesla who in 1891 established the fact that the formation of heat as a result of targeting the tissues by high frequency alternating currents could be medically applied in treating arthritis and other illnesses. Consequently, technologies known as hypothermia have been widely used around the world to treat people up to this day (2).



(1) Wikipedia
(2) Cheney, Margaret. "Tesla: the Man from the Future" (1981)

Thesis Statement

I believe in the possibility of healing through dancing with architecture that charges healing processes and accommodates dance practices.