Healing Enclosure. Tipo, contexto e laboratório arquitetural na Clínica Psiquiátrica de Bragança

Abstract

This dissertation proposes a reading of the architecture of spaces designed to support mental healthcare services centred on the needs of their users and on the conditions of the surrounding context. Such spaces are not approached as isolated entities, nor as mere representations of a functional typology - in this case, the hospital or psychiatric institution -, but rather as expressions of a fundamental relationship with the places in which they are inscribed. Shaped by specific geographical, historical, political, and cultural conditions, they are here understood as formal intermediaries between care, landscape, and city. Grounded in psychiatric hospital structures from the 1970s in northern Portugal, the study discusses a set of concepts such as: enclosure, claustrum and hortus conclusus, enclosed garden, type and heterotopia. Through the notion of heterotopia, the hospital is framed as a differentiated urban condition, negotiating inclusion and exclusion, openness and closure, protection and exposure, within broader social systems. In parallel, the idea of the enclosed garden informs the interpretation of therapeutic landscapes as spatial thresholds, mediating relations between autonomy and control, refuge and exposure, and reconfiguring the relationship between hospital, city, time, and bodily awareness. While rooted in specific local conditions - with the Psychiatry of Bragança as both case study and site of architectural enquiry -, the research aims to establish a project-based framework of reference. Starting from the development of a solution inseparable from its context, the proposal advances through a set of adjustable parameters, applicable across different contexts and scenarios. In this sense, the site becomes a field of experimentation through which transferable architectural knowledge is generated, allowing the proposal to function as a framework for context-sensitive architectural practices.