EMPOWHER: Senior Capstone

EMPOWHER
Where Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Survivors become THRIVHERS

Thesis Statement

Despite the significant percentage of women in the United States who have experienced sexual assault and domestic violence, there is still little access to resources that both provide what they need to support and empower them, and create a positive long-lasting impact on them and their mental health. Additionally, people still don’t know how to best engage with survivors in a way that will make them feel heard and supported, resulting in the survivors not getting the help they need and resorting to unhealthy coping behaviors. Thus, a new inclusive and universally designed healing center that emphasizes community, a safe space, education, and empowerment can not only attempt to teach the public about how to best help and support survivors as a means of prevention, but allow recovering survivors to heal from their traumas and regain their confidence and empower them to take back control of their bodies and lives.

Jump to...

Project Focuses

Community

Inclusive Design

Safety & Security

Concept

Empowerment

Biophilia

Place Attachment

Choice/Control

Wayfinding

Brightness

Color Psychology

Programs Used

Procreate

Revit

Enscape

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Indesign

Adobe Illustrator

Presentation Boards

Anchor 1

Final Thesis Research Paper

Click to download full paper

Anchor 2

Conceptual Work

Concept Deconstruction: PHOENIX

Concept Statement

A phoenix, after going through a cycle of life and dying, rises from the ashes to become stronger and to go through another cycle of life. A victim of sexual and domestic violence will feel as though they are at the lowest point in their life. EMPOWHER will be the place they come to to rise from those ashes and become even stronger versions of themselves. Thus, incorporating elements of the phoenix into the design for EMPOWHER will help contribute to helping survivors grow stronger and more powerful, even after what happened to them.

2D Parti: DYNAMIC COMMUNITY

3D Parti

INTERACTIVE

STEP 1
Move some of the shaped pillars
around: red over yellow, pink under
blue, whatever you want! This should
result in some of their strings getting
entangled with the others.
STEP 2
Shake the paper base. If one or more
of the pillars fall over, repeat step one
and two until none of the pillars fall.

Notice how they don’t fall when they are
closer to one another and the center?
So, what does this mean?

The different shaped pillars represent sexual assault
and domestic violence survivors. They each have a
black stripe to represent that they all have this sense
of shared trauma. While some survivors may have
had the same thing happen to them (represented
by some having the same shape), others, depending
on the support they get and other factors, may be
stronger or more able to deal with it, while others
may fall easier (represented by the different sizes of
the same shapes). However, the closer to each other
they get, the more grounded they become and the
less likely they are to fall, becoming stronger together.
That is what EMPOWHER represents. EMPOWHER will
allow opportunities for survivors to build a sense of
community with one another, while also experiencing
their own personal healing journey so they won’t fall.

together graphic without words transparent background.png

Anchor 3

Floor Plans

Done in Revit and Rendered in Photoshop

First Floor (Not to Scale)

Atrium, Apartments, Corporate Office, Cafe, Survivor Museum, and Lecture Hall

Second Floor (Not to Scale)

Apartments, Psychotherapy rooms, Group Therapy, Mediation and Yoga, Home Economics Kitchen, Classrooms, Retail Center

Third Floor (Not to Scale)

Apartments, Gym with locker rooms, Self-Defense Space, Dance Therapy Studio, Art Therapy Studio, Black Box Theater, Classrooms, Retail Center Interview Pods

Anchor 4

Detail Work

Custom Reception Desks

Survivor Museum Entrance Reception Desk

Corporate Office Reception Desk

Public Entrance Reception Desk

survivor reception desk wings_edited.png

Custom Light Fixture

View from the Bottom

Isolated Axon

Axon of Light Fixture in Atrium

What is the Idea Behind These Custom Elements?

Proponents of psychoanalytic self psychology evaluate the battered woman’s sense of self as it relates to her abusive environment. The psychoanalyst that first advanced this theory refers to “fragmentation” and “disintegration anxiety.”

Disintegration anxiety is an intense anxiety about the breakup of one’s self. Symptoms include serious loss of initiative, profound drop in and damage to self-esteem, and a sense of total meaninglessness.

However, just like how the reception desks create a full image and the light fixture creates a legible message, an abused woman can come back together again and become whole, and that is what EMPOWHER is meant to do.

Anchor 5