vodenos art therapy center

The owners of this art-based therapy facility, located on a secluded 3-acre parcel of land, needed studios for their painting and ceramics activities. One of the owners was dedicating this project to the memory of her deceased husband whose favorite flower was the sunflower.

Rather than represent the sunflower visually, we suggested infusing the project with a more thorough and meaningful understanding of the flower. Our study of the sunflower revealed that its florets, located at the center of the flower, grow in logarithmic, equilangular spirals. These spirals display a system of proportion known as The Golden Section; a numerical series that manifests itself in nature, music, art and classical architecture.

The studio, which is an addition to an existing concrete block out building, is designed around this and other characteristics of the sunflower. The proportional system that is found, for example, in ancient Greek temples was not represented literally, but reinterpreted in a contemporary setting. This process was undertaken to produce an architecture that is imbued with the generative spirit of its subject while fostering a spatial experience that is unique to the specific function and requirements of the project.