Contemplating Sanctuary: Design strategies for contemporary contemplation spaces with cleansing water as a wetland treatment park and urban sanctuary

Abstract

This design thesis explores contemplative design strategies that engender spiritual communion with place. Sensuous experience of cleansing and temporal water creates a restorative environment. Synthesizing design principles with Japanese and Puget Sound case studies, this research speculates on the relationship of water gardens to aid as portals to contemplation and the sacred in an urban ecological wastewater treatment park. Designers can frame and shape perception of natural phenomena that can assist in emotional, psychological, and spiritual renewal. Gardens and assisting architecture offer place and timing to settle into stillness, silence, and solitude. Path, threshold, and enclosure of water offers ways of sculpting a sensory experience that focuses attention in the present and summons tranquility and reflection. This ecological wastewater treatment park in SoDo district Seattle is an urban pilgrimage to a wetland forest reserve. Water, soundscapes, and earthworks sculpt a sanctuary for listening, observation, and story-telling with the transformation of the tidal landscape over time.