Campus as Sacred Ground: Laying the Foundation for Well-Being

There are accounts of increasing anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among students staff at many universities, including the University Ottawa—accounts borne out by official numbers referrals to practitioners. The causes these frequently sought within individuals themselves; solutions assumed lie in therapy, counseling, or medication. In cases where reasons externally, they attributed workloads, interpersonal conflicts, racism, sexism, financial difficulties. These all, without a doubt, valid for ill health. Could another reason seemingly general failure thrive staff, faculty, on Ottawa campus, however, be connected campus itself? It is, after known fact that we all dependent upon deeply reactive our environments. From Vitruvius Ruskin Pallasmaa, theorists have made link between built environment—architecture—and wellness. Architecture has power make us feel anxious, alienated, unseen, increase sense belonging, collective individual identity, place, security, tranquillity. Sacred architecture appears play particularly pivotal role this—to people faiths none. This paper seeks explore whether could potentially reverse upwardly trending poor creating sacred-architecture-centric meaningfully materially honours not only school’s history motto, but also its location valley, unceded land Algonquin, as well current religious cultural diversity students.