“Buildings built from place bring another layer to experiencing the land”

Oliver Lowenstein

in local natural materials and drawing out the ecological relation to the land, rather than superficially standing on, but bearing no material relation to it.

Landscape and the senses

It is Human Nature’s conviction that a plan and designs for the Phoenix should encompass the human experience of landscape across the full range of senses, and not only through the visual sense. This requires expanding the field, so landscape is not only seen, but is full body and multi-sensory, conscious of and alert to the integration of all the senses, from sound and hearing, through to the visceral experience of the smelt and tasted.

Acknowledging this full bodily, somatic span of the senses adds an additional layer to the conventional experience of built fabric. Just as it is our bodies – rather than our eyes – which experience being in, rather than only looking at, landscape, it is these same bodies which experience the built world. The smoothness of one material, the coldness of another, and the vivid colour of a third are uncovered through the medium of human skin and touch, as much as the eye. It is this shared bodily relation to landscape and the built fabric which leads design here.

The acoustic ecology – how and what we hear in a place – plays a part. Sound pollution here – the distinction between a low traffic and vehicle-intensive urban district soundscape –is as significant as light pollution. Likewise, the experiential contrast between developments where green infrastructure is thoroughly integrated into their built fabric and those that aren’t. The multi-sensory experience of ground level habitats which feature the smells, sounds and scents of bees, pollen, and birdsong, and perfumed scent garden trail related to species of flowers found in this part of Sussex. The whole-body sensory experience of landscape and the built environment can add up to more than the sum of its eyes.

The human experience of the built landscape

The complexity of the human experience of landscape at the psychological and unconscious level is evident in our relationships with the familiar, older urban built fabric. When we speak of the significance of historic character and cultural heritage, alongside the preservation of a cultural asset, something else is touched on related to intangible psychological factors at both the individual and collective levels, which go make up a place.

These include the atmospheres, ‘mood’, and even ‘personality’ of a place, brought on by the interplay of a host of intangibles: light, weather, temperature, warmth, heat, coldness, rain, wind, etc, in themselves and in their relationship with the built fabric.

The human experience of place is present in our affection for the old, the known, and the appeal of traditional vernacular building forms, which Lewes is particularly rich in, with its diversity of historic buildings from different eras spanning the centuries and providing a sense of cultural constancy and continuity. As often as not they carry an emotional and psychological charge, often related to cultural memory.

Human Nature is alert to the psychological dimensions that come with a new building development, particularly in such an historic and individual town. Through its embrace of a new, 21st century, sustainable and Lewes sensitive vernacular, through the diversity of designers, and through maintaining the human-scale across the Phoenix site a new layer in the town’s topographical tapestry will be sewn. Akin to historic Lewes, with its emphasis on heterogeneity over homogeneity, in surfaces, in facades and in whole building forms, and with both morphology and massing acting as breaks on uniformity. Responsive to the town’s current moment and its many tomorrows, this empathic approach helps new memories form, new atmospheres crystallise, and new histories be forged, yet all the while echoing the town’s past.