Latitude Sauna – a reflection on architectural and confinement
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In this time of Corona crisis, we need to press the reset button on the way we think of our roles as designers. How do we reframe our perspectives to enable us to see a wider angle, a ‘bigger picture’?” In spatial terms, as we zoom out from the narrow path, from the enclosed cave space to a wider lighter perspective, we may ask the following questions: how has narrow close-mindedness contributed to this crisis? How can we help to reframe the view as professional designers – can our designs help us to see a ‘bigger picture?’
Moreover, how can this period in quarantine serve us, as we reflect upon urgent issues while locked down in tight interior spaces? Perhaps we become more creative with time on our hands to sketch, read and address the phenomenon of claustrophobia or ‘cabin fever’ and its negative connotations, not to mention its detrimental implications on mental health. Our leaders have been building walls of different types – walls of ignorance in the face of scientific facts, walls of petty-minded racism, etc., which have led us to this global crisis. Are there ways in which designers can think in spatial terms about opening up these walls? In pondering today’s problems while quarantining or staying home, some of us in squeezed apartment spaces, for an unsettlingly indeterminate length of time, we designers may turn to the work in the 1970s of American architect Charles Moore’s concept of the ‘aedicule.’