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- Högström, Ebba, 1961-
(författare)
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Kalejdoskopiska rum : Diskurs, materialitet och praktik i den decentraliserade psykiatriska vården
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- During the period 1967-1995, Swedish mental healthcare underwent a complete re-organisation, starting with county councils taking over responsibility for mental healthcare from the state. Asylums were then phased out and mental health care moved closer to patients. The Mental Health Reform of 1995 completed this decentralisation and put the emphasis on an independent and integrated life as a citizen in society and the idea of a dwelling of one’s own. This thesis describes and analyses spatial aspects of decentralised mental healthcare in Sweden, focusing on the decentralisation discourse regarding organisation, localisation, patient care and working methods behind decentralisation and its spatial performance. A case study of decentralised mental healthcare in Nacka, a Stockholm suburb, between 1958-1999 examines in particular the emerging decentralisation discourse 1958-1973, The Nacka Project 1974-1980 (one of the first examples of community care in Sweden), psychiatry in Nacka 1980-1994 and the official report Welfare and Freedom of Choice from 1995. The methods used include studies of documents, interviews, visual and architectural drawing analysis. The theoretical point of departure for the analysis is a post-structural heterogeneous concept of space where spatial materiality and discursiveness are looked upon as intertwined. The result shows that the re-organisation of mental healthcare brought about a substantial spatial transformation. Normalisation of patients’ lives involved integration into society and support for independent living. The local environment was the main trope for the early stage of decentralised mental healthcare, but the notion of a dwelling of one’s own became the important trajectory to an independent life after 1995. The idea of the patient is challenged by the independence discourse, which could be said to contain an idea of the ‘non-patient’. Overall, it can be concluded that spatial organisations of the built environment are never value-free or neutral. They reflect, enable and constrain power relations in a society and material space can contribute to the power of one group at the expense of another. Furthermore, the results of the spatialities, or the meanings, cannot be predicted. It is therefore crucial to distinguish power in all its configurations and scales and to keep negotiations alive, especially within the field of mental healthcare, but also in the care sector as a whole and in other societal institutions where policies buildings and built environment interact with user practices. This kaleidoscopic perspective can be used for examining complexities in the past and present and for encouraging future potentialities in the process of making/enacting spatial relations.
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| 2. |
- Nobel, Andreas, 1966-
(författare)
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Dimmer på Upplysningen : text, form och formgivning
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The main part of the dissertation is a text. The other is an exhibition mainly presenting a bow-lathe and some furniture designed and produced in that bow lathe. Interior- and furniture design are disciplines in which sensory qualities are important. Within these disciplines there are well established methods and languages for developing these qualities. However, such development has rarely been achieved through the medium of text. Sensory qualities tend to be ignored in highly textualized knowledge environments. Within education textualized knowledge is often valued higher than forms of knowledge developed through other medias than text. This situation has led to a dichotomized perception of knowledge where textualized knowledge attained through writing and conceptualizing, is valued higher than knowledge developed through physical work. The thesis argues that this hierarchical view on different forms of knowledge also has an influence on the practical profession of the designer, manifest in the paradoxical situation where the form aspects of design is neglected and over shadowed by various forms of textualized knowledge. The central research question posed in the text part is: Which adverse effects might an increasing emphasis on textualized theory have on the design practices? The questions are highlighted from perspectives such as; epistemology, tradition, history and power.The central research question in the exhibition part examines if any possible negative effects on design resulting from the above mentioned scenario, may be prevented through engaging in a highly physical and non-conceptual design- process? The purpose of the exhibition part is to introduce methods and design that may provide the impetus for further development in the fields of design. The bow lathe is presented as an example of a productive tool for the development of relevant contemporary design.
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| 3. |
- Ioannidis, Konstantinos, 1976-
(författare)
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Designing the Edge : An Inquiry into the Psychospatial Nature of Meaning in the Architecture of the Urban Waterfront
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The initial goal of this effort is to develop a discussion on urban design process and thinking that acknowledges the needs of places with meaning in the design of the urban waterfront. The thesis addresses the fact that the problematic of the coastal formulation is intricate, comprising not only aspects related to the spatial organization and design of its domain but also shared properties originated by the presence and movement of the perceiving subject in the area. In this framework, the research attempts to provide an understanding of the main relationships that the subject cultivates inside the coastal space and to offer a broader spatial reading of its narrative function. On the hypothesis that this function is susceptible of interpretation, the thesis develops an interest in examining the effects of the psychospatial nature of meaning on the design and experience of the urban edge, for to interpret a narrative spatial construct is to specify its meaning. To explore the issue of waterfront places that speak of the subject, the research conceives the coastal space as a field of mediated parameters that pertain to three crucial operational premises: the symbolic function of the urban space near the water, the meaning behind the coastal form, and the engagement of the perceiving subject in the conscious or reflexive appropriation of the waterfront setting. These premises, traced as psychophysiological spaces, determine the intermediary, the integrative, and the expressive discourses for the development of places with meaning near the water. Through them, the thesis attempts a reading of the coastal domain based upon the material interpretation of the meanings and messages associated with the immediate experience of the onset of water‐born notions, concepts, and images. Writing about the dialectics between the psychospatial inquiry and the spatial experience of the edge, this thesis suggests that, contrary to the established preconception, the psychology of human‐edge relations submits the perceiving subject to the conception of the coastal form and shape.
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