Date of Submission
Spring 5-13-2026
Degree Type
Dissertation/Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Architecture
Department
Architecture
Committee Chair/First Advisor
Ehsan Sheikholharam Mashhadi
Abstract
What if alcohol relapse is not only a weakness of will, but a failure of the environment? Addiction recovery is often understood as a clinical process, yet sustained sobriety depends equally on the reorganization of daily habits. Research on alcohol use disorders demonstrates that addictive behaviors are reinforced through spatial triggers and embodied routine. Post-detox recovery is particularly fragile: the body is sober, but the triggers that sustained addiction remain. The question is not only how to treat addiction, but how to design the spaces in which people learn to live without it.
This thesis investigates how architecture can combat alcohol addiction by reshaping daily rituals through movement, repetition, and time, challenging the institutional frameworks that define how rehabilitation centers are designed. It proposes a 30-resident post-detox rehabilitation center in Columbus, Georgia, organized around a mapped weekday ritual of cultivation, craft, stewardship, hospitality, and communal gathering.
Drawing on addiction neuroscience, social-model recovery frameworks, and research on the neurological effects of built environments, the project translates daily time into spatial organization. Programmatic relationships and movement sequences are derived from the rhythms of daily life — working, eating, making, and gathering. The design occupies the liminal space of recovery itself: neither clinical institution nor private home, but a threshold environment calibrated to the pace of behavioral change.
This thesis argues that the built environment can function as a scaffold for behavioral transformation, an active agent that structures time, visibility, and collective routine. By rethinking what a rehabilitation center can be, architecture can create the conditions under which sobriety is not just treated, but practiced daily, habit by habit.