The Arts of Joyful Being is a space for performance arts that question the role of architecture in accessibility and inclusion. It challenges the afterthought nature of standards through joyful movement, respite, and consumption of culture.

This project aims to design for flexibility of needs and provide choice, in levels of stimulation, observing, resting, and movement. It questions traditional notions of infantilisation and pity by celebrating differences through respite. Each respite room celebrates different disabled Greek mythology figures through environmental and architectural features.

The auditorium is divided into zones of stimulation levels denoted by tactile floor textures, and adjacent rooms of respite with varying privacy. This idea of rest extends out to the rest of the building where bollards are seats, and barrier ropes are hammocks. The building is made up of a series of round portal frames that soften the built space, the publicly accessible performance catwalk is hung onto two parabolic steel arches. Skylights in the form of flowers create a combination of comforting warm diffused lighting and rays of lights on the floor as alternative means of wayfinding.