Who doesn’t need a hug? This exhibition will lift your mood

If you visit the installation Deep Calm at Curtin House later this year, prepare to be enveloped in a warm, welcoming hug.

The work is the brainchild of Sibling Architecture co-directors Amelia Borg and Nicholas Braun and their colleagues, and informed by principles of sensory design, which creates spaces that are easy to navigate for neurodiverse people.

Sibling Architecture’s Nicholas Braun and Amelia Borg.Credit: Joe Armao

Deep Calm is a series of organic-looking, weighted, soft sculptures created to help patrons relax and feel good. “Visitors will be guided in and tucked into these sculptures, [which have] been designed with certain weights. These soft sculptures will be hugging you,” Borg says.

Created for Melbourne Design Week in May, the installation accommodates different group sizes: one is designed for visitors wanting to try it solo, the others allow two or three people to do it together.

Custom rugs of different pile heights are also part of the piece, which essentially mimic different tactile therapies, says Borg. A sound and light piece is also being developed to help users “deregulate” and manage their emotions.

People who are neurodivergent have a wide range of requirements – there is no one catchall, Borg says. One in eight Australians are neurodiverse, according to Monash Health, an umbrella term encompassing autism, ADHD, dyslexia, Tourette’s syndrome and more.

Part of the Wangaratta District Specialist School, designed by Sibling Architecture. The project was 2024 winner of the AA Social Impact Award.Credit: Derek Salwell

The idea for the project, which Sibling spent 12 months researching and is funded by a grant from Creative Victoria, came from the organisation’s work on the new Wangaratta District Specialist School. Catering for students living with quite severe physical and intellectual disabilities, the school features several innovative design elements, including a space that inspired Deep Calm. “Students liked squeezing their bodies through tight alcoves and elements,” Borg says.

The deep pressure or “squeezing” phenomenon is a practice that’s been around for a long time, she says, a therapy used by occupational therapists working with neurodivergent children since the 1960s.

Renders of Deep Calm, created by Sibling Architecture.

“It’s based on a similar idea to weighted blankets – and weighted harnesses for dogs – that feeling of being weighted down or hugged, the pressure can produce serotonin, the happy hormone, which can act as a calming agent,” Borg says.

The insight was first observed at a slaughterhouse in the United States when Temple Grandin – who would go on to become a professor and pioneer of documenting the lived experience of autism – saw cows being pushed through a tight apparatus before they were slaughtered and realised the experience of being squeezed helped calm them. The story was recorded in her 1995 memoir Thinking in Pictures and adapted into a film starring Claire Danes in 2010.

Deep Calm is not just for neurodivergent people, says Borg, who hopes it will appeal to everyone. These sorts of developments can feel clinical or medical, she says, so they are trying to approach it in a way that is visually enticing and fun.

Museums and galleries around the world, including the National Gallery of Victoria, are addressing neurodivergent visitors’ needs through sensory maps, which can help in planning visits and finding “safe” rooms. Large crowds can wreak havoc on emotional regulation, as can noise and intense light.

Theatres and other arts venues offer low stimulation events at certain times to accommodate the needs of neurodivergent visitors.

“If you are going to visit one of these places and you are sensitive to sound and light, the map gives you safe zones that map out zones where there’s natural light and connection to the outside,” Borg says. “It might say these rooms have really intense projections, so you know to steer away; it gives you a warning before you go into those spaces.”

An initiative of the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria, Melbourne Design Week is curated and delivered by the NGV. It attracted more than 100,000 visitors last year.

Deep Calm is at Curtin House and free; bookings are required and visits will be timed. Melbourne Design Week runs from May 15-25.

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