Rabbiya Ahsan
Thesis Title:
A Salutogenic Approach to Healing from Drug Addiction
Project Title:
Shifa Ghar
Location:
Mai Kolachi Bypass
User Group:
Drug Addicts
Project Shifa is an unfolding and discovery of healing from an addiction. It is a journey to return back to life. To acceptance. To control. This is a journey of coming back home. One of the most rapidly growing problems in Pakistan is drug addiction, and unsurprisingly, it is also the one that is least discussed. Healing from addiction is as much a taboo as the problem itself, and there are rarely any places that provide rehabilitation in its truest sense. Healing is a holistic and transformative process that involves repairing and recovering not just the mind, but also body and spirit.
Rabbiya Ahsan
Architecture
Thesis Title:
A Salutogenic Approach to Healing from Drug Addiction
Project Title:
Shifa Ghar
Location:
Mai Kolachi Bypass
User Group:
Drug Addicts
Project Shifa is an unfolding and discovery of healing from an addiction. It is a journey to return back to life. To acceptance. To control. This is a journey of coming back home. One of the most rapidly growing problems in Pakistan is drug addiction, and unsurprisingly, it is also the one that is least discussed. Healing from addiction is as much a taboo as the problem itself, and there are rarely any places that provide rehabilitation in its truest sense. Healing is a holistic and transformative process that involves repairing and recovering not just the mind, but also body and spirit.
Breaking away from the usual perception of drug abuse, words and phrases like, “badkirdari” and “yeh hum koi hotel thori chala rahe hain jo inko achi facilities dain”, project Shifa finds solution to uplift a certain group of people through architecture.
Shifa Ghar offers different approaches to healing, mainly its connection to earth and nature. By giving those who are staying, a chance to learn a skill, through cultivating the herb garden. Not only that, but it also gives an opportunity to allow the site to slowly, with time, return to its former glory.
Different learning opportunities are provided through areas like library and seminar hall as well to encourage positive skills in people.
Plan of the rehabilitation facility
Design Strategies that will help in the Salutogenic healing process
Longitudinal section that shows the vegetation taking over in a years’ time
Section BB’
Roof plan highlighting the ratio of built and unbuilt on site.
