DÉRIVE
Design Studio, Georgia Tech, Spring 2021, Instructor: Julie Kim
The following is a theoretical design for a Wellness Retreat located in Sweetwater Creek State park, thirty minutes outside of Atlanta. The site is on a river and within and around the ruins of the New Manchester Manufacturing Co. mill. The retreat will act as a refuge and contrast the urban life that many of the users will be accustomed to. Visitors of the state park and retreat have the ability to wander for miles on a network of trails in the park. Movement along a forest path is a dérive, a French word describing when a person or persons “let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.” - Guy Debord, Theory of Dérive. The trail is blazed in a process similar to a dérive, as the path must react to the landscape and molds to the valleys and mountain peaks. Dérive is a design that reacts to the landscape and elements in ways that blur boundaries between mind and nature. The desired feeling for the user is one of a long hike. Where the hiker relaxes into the terrain, so that their movement is defined by it, and in the process brings the life of the natural landscape into their body and mind.