The Empathy Pavilion is a proposal for an interactive and immersive experience, designed to encourage connection, observation and reflection through nature, art, animation, augmented reality and design. The pavilion serves as a culmination of our respective working theories about shared feelings, empathy, self-care, responses to grief and our role within global ecologies.
The Empathy Pavilion
The Empathy Pavilion proposes an interactive and immersive experience, designed to encourage connection, observation and reflection.
Caring SocietyMental HealthSocial CareWellbeing
Anna Tsiganchuk
Jack Whitelock
Yongman Li
What's Inside?
Inside the pavilion is a 360° sensory experience, comprising painting display panels for Jack's paintings and rafters for hanging Leona's scent points (cotton wool puffs infused with aromatherapeutic scents). The rafters also house projectors for Emmie's animations to be brought to life over Jack's paintings. Alongside the entrance is a storage area for Anna's Virtual Reality glasses. Each element's position in the pavilion allows for a cohesive and immersive experience, and for the user to engage with sensory inputs to trigger feelings of connectivity and empathy.
Visual Elements
Jack and Emmie's contributions to the pavilion work in unison with Anna's VR glasses to provide the visual stimuli for the pavilion. By incorporating themes of grief, self-care and tech-forward, holistic healing, the visual elements harmonise for a surreal, calming and validating experience.
Aromatherapeutic Elements
In unison with the Pavilion's visual elements, Leona's aromatherapy is dispersed throughout the space via hanging cotton wool. Multiple scent points allow for a variety of calming scent combinations to form, allowing the user to tune in and reflect on their own feelings, an important part of the listening process that gives way to interpersonal empathy.
The scent points work in conjunction with the structure of the pavilion itself. The slatted facade of the pavilion allows for wind and the natural environment to enter while carrying the scents through the structure. Connectivity with nature in this way gives users a sense of a greater purpose and highlights the need for empathy in human interconnectivity and when interacting with nature.
