Socio Design Foundation 2012 Monthly Vignette Competition

Each monthly competition is a design concept to which applicants submit an architectural, spatial response through a single vignette. While entries are limited to a single vignette, they can be expressed through any medium: architectural design, photography, sculpture, etc. Can you distill your ideas to a single vignette?

June Challenge: “Children’s Self-Therapy Arts Wall”

…a childhood memory

I spent every winter break, around Chinese New Year, at my great-grandparents’ house in the countryside. My great-grandparents had long since past away, but my parents, aunts, and uncles all reconvened at the house each year to worship our ancestors, and to wish for good luck and good health for the coming year. My cousin and I slept in a long rectangular room in the courtyard house. The south-facing wall of the room had two small windows and an access door. On all those cold, lazy winter mornings, my cousin and I would crawl over to the west end of the room, slide open the wooden door, and warm ourselves with the morning sun as it baked the concrete floor. Like lizards in the desert, we emerged from our covers to sunbathe on the warmed rock. In the afternoon, the dark room and the intense sunlight coming through the small windows made a great stage and atmosphere for shadow puppet shows and games. While all the adults were running about preparing for various ceremonies, bracing this old house that had no insulation, electricity, or water, and at a time when the Internet hadn’t been invented, this long brick wall with its three small apertures provided all the physical and mental therapy that my cousin and I needed.