Learning from Eelgrass: A Transformative Spa Experience to Restore Balance Between Humans and Nature

Abstract

While the use of natural materials has proven to reduce embodied carbon emissions, the success of sustainable interventions ultimately depends on shifting the environmental ethos of humans. Here lies an important role for architecture: to shift the way that people interact with and consider materials. Drawing from historical precedent, this thesis reintroduces eelgrass wrack as a carbon sequestering, local, natural building material through an Eelgrass Spa experience at Taylor Head Provincial Park, Nova Scotia. Eelgrass experiments inform material applications and relate the traditional eelgrass processing sequence to an immersive spa journey. The program prompts spa visitors to relearn how to see materials through visual literacy, where eelgrass applications communicate traditional knowledge of material and place. This includes a variety of non-verbal cues throughout the spa that create a dialog between material, user, space, and nature, establishing a new sense of environmental awareness.