South of MOAB, Utah on an extraordinarily flat site on the edge of a sharp descent into Canyonlands National Park is the VAS Rehabilitation Center for Consumption Addiction. The design principles of VAS, Voluntary Architectural Simplicity, were used create sublime and transcendental architecture to enhance the effective and affective qualities of the rehabilitation center. The center will be operated using the traditions of Trappist prayer, and study. The center is similar to a monastery, given the program and functional goals. The large thirty-thousand square foot program includes housing for permanent staff and clients, work and study spaces, and communal and personal prayer spaces.

 

The principle objective of the of the design is to reorient patients with the world. Having been consumed by possessions and the chaos of everyday life, the design eliminates the unnecessary and realigns patients with the basic tenants of time and space. To accomplish this objective, the primary design move inverts the typical building diagram. Placing the building underground requires patients to use soft undulating ramps that connect the complex’s programs. These ramps slowly move users up and down the horizon, realigning them with a basic element of our existence on this earth. This experience will assist patients in reconnecting with lost pieces of their lives. light is let into interior spaces through the deconstruction of the building mass and use clerestories and ribbon windows.