Place making for the disabled: a critical analysis of the architectural intervention in rehabilitating the Sri Lankan disabled soldier

Abstract

Architecture is a physical, emotional and intellectual experience. It facilitates man's bodily comfort, emotionally attaches him in to it and as a work of art through symbolic communication leads him towards a higher realm of contemplation. A true architectural exercise would not have stressed only on the building itself, but also on the entire setting as a whole. It will be a careful experiment of context, man and his potential expressions and experiences. Such an exercise would have ended not creating mere spaces, but places instead where the user will find a unity and oneness with the entire setting. Such an environment will generate a longing and an emotional bond with the user where he will identify himself with the place, which is an essential psychological, need of man. The expected task of architecture is nothing but this creation of place. Such place then would be in communication with the user and it will make his life comfortable by attending in to his psychological needs and allowing to release his emotional stresses in a rather subdued manner. Since the place is some thing that has a curative effect on man. Disabled soldier is some body who is overwhelmed by psychological and emotional disabilities in same or rather severe manner as his physical disabilities. Since the attempt to rehabilitate him for his physical disability should go hand in hand with the psychological rehabilitation too. This process of psychological rehabilitation will immensely be supported by an appropriate environment that is a place itself where the disabled soldier, all other people who associate, and the existing context merged and integrated in such a way, that positive experiences and expressions are created among themselves, which is essential in the process of rehabilitation. Architect as the creator of the built environment, then has an enormous responsibility when he is designing for the disabled soldier not to evade from his expected task due to the avoidable superficial reasons and through an informed approach create places for them instead of mere buildings