The High Room addresses hustle culture and social standards within the Melbourne CBD. Located in the Bourke St Mall, the project facilitates a ceremony of transcendence, providing treatment for anxiety, depression and stress. Participants are guided through psychedelic experience via a range of techniques and substances. The architecture is both protective and distracting, maneuvering people through the space while balancing tensions between public and private areas and experiences. Stimulating and addictive strategies use light, colour, voids and textures to enhance the experience and affect the user but also to encourage an ongoing gap in the capitalist city.
The transitional buffer
Transition spaces within the project are both covered and open air, moving people through, in and under inflatable structures. This part of the project, "the buffer", aims to be both protective and distracting. The collage describes this layering of edges with a transparent materiality.
Ceremony of Transcendence
This video illustrates how the user would participate in the ceremony throughout the project. The different stages include the entry from the street, transition between spaces, psychedelic therapy, and reflection. It highlights the atmosphere and architectural qualities that affects their experience.
Section
The section has been taken perpendicular to the street, through the middle of the project and highlights spaces for both individual psychedelic experiences and shared spaces for rest and reflection.
Street Access Perspective
This perspective shows the connection to the pedestrian activity along the Bourke St Mall. The joining staircase follows the walkway, parallel with the shops and tram tracks, blending into the street. The project pops out from between two existing buildings, only making a small portion of the project visible from the street.
Jane Riley, The transitional buffer
Jane Riley, Ceremony of Transcendence
Jane Riley, Section
Jane Riley, Street Access Perspective
