Memory Matters: mementos of time and place

Proctor memory matters: & Matthews mementos of Architects time and place

Memory Matters

“And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory.”

Famously, on tasting madeleines, Proust’s involuntary memory was triggered, transporting him to a different place...

The concept of memory is important in architecture and placemaking, and an exploration of the morphology of context and historic typologies helps to create a dialogue between the reassurances of the past and the ever changing patterns of 21st Century life.

In this issue of &, published to coincide with the 2017 London Festival of Architecture and the theme of Memory, we are pleased to present the thoughts on memory from a range of writers, through four short essays; from the sampling techniques of Hip-Hop musical subculture to the role architecture plays in its ability to trigger a lifetime of memories in the twilight of life.

The relationship between architecture and memory transcends culture and it is the personal family recollections of the founders of the Mannan Foundation Trust which has initiated a desire to improve the lives of women in Rajapur, Bangladesh.

The first essay reminds us that memory should not be taken for granted and it is not until we either lose our recall faculty or through the challenges of new environments where conditioned memory struggles to function, that we realise the importance that memory plays in the way we perceive the world.

We would like to thank the following for their valuable and much appreciated contributions to this issue: the writers Monica Baia, Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows, Josh Proctor and Ken Worpole. Annabel Quigley for the layout and edit of this edition to the concept design by Jannuzzi Smith and Tim Crocker for project photography.

Body, space, memory

“The successive houses in which we have lived have no doubt made our gestures commonplace. But we are very surprised, when we return to the old house, after an odyssey of many years, to find that the most delicate gestures, the earliest gestures suddenly come alive, are still faultless. In short, the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting. We are the diagram of the functions of inhabiting that particular house, and all the other houses are but variations on a fundamental theme.�

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Every morning we assume that our body will normally perform our daily tasks. We take for granted our movements.

It seems so natural to us that we hardly appreciate the vast sophisticated mechanisms operating behind the stage of our daily performances and routines.

We are not a permanent blank page, a constant tabula rasa (blank slate). Unless you suffer from dementia or some similar condition, you do not find yourself out of the blue having your coffee or travelling on the tube on your way to work. We initiate these actions by employing a certain kinetic dynamic that includes precise coordination, an unconscious interaction with the world.

You wake up in the morning. It is the beginning of your day and for a fraction of a second you wonder where you are. And then, almost immediately, you call yourself to the present moment and you are able to re-situate yourself; even more so during holidays.

But imagine if, for one day, everything you do, every single movement, every single task you perform, you do it as if for the first time: standing up out of bed and walking; brushing your teeth; tightening the laces of your shoes; peeling an apple; holding a cup of coffee; crossing the road; recognizing the sound of a horn and the smell of freshly made bread.

Each one of these steps and choreographies, that unfold along the day, are saved in your body’s memory. For most of these actions, you weren’t born knowing how to perform them, even if now they seem so natural and easy. Yet, you forget that they were once taught, that you learned them by practising and repeating them over and over, until you perform them in a more graceful way – just like that move that you do at the disco!

We are learning and making our way in the world, interacting with people, places, objects and tools. Learning to understand our bodies and learning to move is something that each and every human initiates and carries out from birth.

Sense of reality: how do we perceive reality?

We have a hundred billion neurons producing our sense of reality. Since an early stage, we are establishing pathways in our brain that will be used for the rest of our lives. Reality is our brain’s ultimate construction.

We ‘fabricate’ an internal model – vital to our ability to function – that is built up from years of experience so we don’t have to continuously build it from scratch, every day. This internal model is an approximation, not a perfect representation. At every moment, we are updating and correcting it. Our senses are like portals to the outside world.

Reality is internally generated, as a simulation. We rely on a series of expectations. So it is fair to say that most of the time we do not perceive things as they are, but as we are.

When you travel from home to work, and vice-versa, you are updating your internal model of the city/place you live with new information (that you find relevant) to help you better understand who you are and where you are.

Body-world nexus: how does the mind construct the space that we experience?

The first time I moved to London, I was frequently knocking objects over and colliding with the borders of things at my new flat. I was unfamiliar with this new domestic space where I was now living. There were marks of strangeness and an unfamiliarity of the body in the new space – none of them shaped by the other: when the limits and borders of the body and its surroundings are not yet defined. This often happened when I arrived late at night and I did not want to switch on the lights and wake up my landlord. I was unfamiliar with the new flow and space constrains. I did not have a mental map yet that allowed me to cross the house with my eyes closed.

As Husserl said, we are “animate organisms”. Animation is of the nature of life. The knowledge of space is central to our behaviour – we live in it, we move through it, we explore and defend it. Our “core self” is the zero point of the surrounding world and we are at this zero point of orientation.

How, then, is space represented in the brain?

Immanuel Kant argued that space, as we know it, is a preconscious organizing feature of the human mind, a scaffold upon which we are able to understand the physical world of objects, extension and motion. People are born with principles of ordering space and time, so that when other sensations are elicited – be they sounds, images, smells or tactile experiences – they are automatically interwoven in specific ways with space and time. John O’Keefe applied this Kantian logic about space to memory. He argued that many forms of memory (such as memory for people and objects) use spatial coordinates – that is, we typically remember people and events in a spatial context. In 55 B.C. Cicero, the great Roman poet and orator, described the Greek ‘loci method’ (used to this day by some actors and memory contest champions) of remembering words and items by picturing them in the different rooms of a house in a sequence, and then mentally walking through the rooms in the right order.

In “The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map” (1976), O’Keefe and Lynn Nadel proposed that a specific population of neurons in the hippocampus – a brain region implicated in various memory processes – were responsible for encoding the location of a mammal within space. This group of neurons were dubbed Place Cells. These place cells would form the neurological basis of a cognitive map, defined by the interrelations of the different elements that compose the environment.

According to the neuroscientist Eric Kandel, the brain commonly represents information about space in many areas and many different ways. The properties of each representation vary according to its purpose. For example, for some representations of space the brain usually uses egocentric coordinates (centred on the receiver), encoding where a light is relative to our eyes or where an odour or touch comes from with respect to the body.

For other types of behaviours, like memory for space, the organism needs to encode its position relative to the outside world and the relationship of external objects to one another.

For these purposes the brain uses ‘allocentric’ coordinates (centred on the world).

Different organisms develop different movements. A bird, a fish, a snail have their own body-world nexus, and it is almost as if their unique movements generates their own timespace dynamic.

Know what, know how: explicit and implicit memories Brenda Milner showed, in the last century, that there is more than one kind of memory.

We process and store information about the world in two fundamentally different ways: explicit and implicit memories, which are stored in different regions of the brain.

What we usually think of as conscious memory is the explicit (or declarative) memory. It is the conscious recall of people, places, objects, facts and events and it is stored in the prefrontal cortex. It is the ‘know what’.

After these memories are converted to long-term memories, they are stored in the parts of the cortex that correspond to the senses involved – that is, in the same areas that originally processed the information.

Unconscious memory is what it is called implicit (or procedural) memory. Implicit memory underlies perceptual and motor skills, such as riding a bicycle or serving a tennis ball. It is the ‘know how’.

Implicit memory often has an automatic quality. It is recalled directly through performance, without any conscious effort or even awareness that we are drawing on memory.

Although experiences change perceptual and motor abilities, those experiences are virtually inaccessible to conscious recollection.

Movement repertoire: kinetic melodies According to Merleau-Ponty, our Body Image is “a compendium of our bodily experience”. Everyday movement involves the whole body and it is the result of global kinetic orchestrations and harmonies.

As we learn new skills, they change the structure of our brain.

After years of practice, a specialized set of connections has been formed. From walking to tying shoe laces, from typing, to riding a bike and from dancing to playing the piano. Skills are hard wired to the structure of our brains, making them automatic and energy efficient.

These skills become hidden from us – they become unconscious. Body memories continually vanish into the depths of our corporeal existence and continually rise up from the same depths.

Specific objects, specific spaces, specific actions, call for specific movements. For example, the action of using a pen, a brush or a pair of scissors calls for a different way of approaching each action and each task triggers a different interaction, a different sequence of movements. The same applies for walking along a street, climbing a mountain or folding a cardboard box. These actions evoke certain patterns of movement, a serial coordinated movement that adapts us to distinct tasks, intentions and specific purposes.

These patterns of movement are forged in-the-flesh since infancy and childhood. If one ‘wears’ movement long enough, it can become a kinetic dynamic.

A movement is learned when the body has understood it.

Every new movement, that we understand and learn, can be recreated like a ‘kinetic melody’ that you bring to the fore at any time you want to reuse it. Once initiated, the movement flows on by itself. The dynamics of movement are felt as they unfold. You do not need to think about what you are doing in order to be able to do it.

The habit body is flexible, adjusting itself to the kinetic demands of the moment. Kinetic melodies become the expandable repertoire of ‘I cans’, our ‘degrees of freedom’ in the vast universe of possibilities. Each body has in itself a potential number of movements and gestures that in different circumstance or needs can be transformed into (re)action.

Who you are is constantly changing in the course of your life.

But there is a constant that links it all together, a pillar of your personality – MEMORY. Learning and memory are central to our very identity. Memory gives you self-coherence and selfhistory.

There is a permanent process of configuration to the different spaces of existence and action. By remembering, we continually reconstruct the self, as an individual and as part of society.

Life itself is a memory – the ability to retain information and repeat the processes.

Every brain has a different narrative. Each brain carries its own unique model of the world that is what we experience, and what makes us unique. The experience of being you and becoming you is a single one.

Monica Baia studied Philosophy at the University of Porto and subsequently worked for the Saatchi Gallery prior to joining the communications team at Proctor and Matthews Architects.

Photography: Overleaf – Laura and Brady in the Shadow of Our House, 1994, Abelardo Morell Opposite – Picasso draws a centaur in the air with light, 1949 Gjon Mili – The LIFE Picture Collection © Getty Images

Chapter House Lichfield Chapter House, a retirement / later living community for people over 55, is located within one of Lichfield’s important central conservation areas. The design draws inspiration from the characteristic historic morphology of Lichfield’s walled gardens and the original cloistered form of the demolished medieval friary which once occupied the site.

Accommodation primarily consists of 38 new homes, including 12 one bedroom and 26 two bedroom apartments.

The development also incorporates a number of internal and external facilities which encourage neighbourly interaction between new residents and locals, and will hopefully over time, help to nurture a sense of community, security and belonging. A small visitor apartment is located at ground level. This is available to visiting relatives or friends.

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1:View of principal facades with chimney marker 2: Monk’s Walk entrance 3: Principal west elevation 4: Twin gables of the south/west elevation seen from the south 5: Inner landscaped courtyard elevation 6: North facing entrance colonade

The sequence of spaces around the building (including the incorporation of the existing Monk’s walk landscaped garden – an amenity space maintained by existing local residents) will help to create a safe and leisurely ‘exercise’ circuit for older residents.

Location:

Lichfield

No. of units:

38

Site area: Density:

Tenure mix: Client:

Design team:

Local authority: Project status:

0.7 Ha

54 dph

100% private PegasusLife

Proctor and Matthews Architects, Camlins Landscape Architects, Peter Brett Associates, Barton Willmore, Max Fordham, WSP, Joe Holyoak Heritage, Gr8 Space Lichfield District Council

Complete

Key narrative Remnants of the friary and the walled garden enclosures which dominated the streetscape of this area of Lichfield in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries remain. The distinctive gables and chimneys of the Bishops Lodgings and the linear walled garden known locally as the Monk’s Walk provide key markers within and around the site. These establish the armature around which a series of new public and communal pathways, gardens, cloisters and courtyards are created. This provides the external spaces for neighbourly interaction and community activity and also creates an active visual focus for the less mobile residents within the development.

A publically accessible route connects a new pocket park – the Friary Garden – located adjacent to the entrance facade, via a cloistered frontage to the central courtyard. This garden court is framed by a linear orangery/conservatory, with echoes of the historic garden forms of Lichfield. This helps to define the eastern edge of the central space and provides a buffer between the tranquil focal garden and the adjacent walled parking court located to the rear of the adjacent public library and archive. It also creates a tempered, sheltered environment for residents and an opportunity to engage in gardening activities. This not only extends the seasonal use of the external landscape but also importantly provides a space in which residents can engage with the local community groups who currently maintain the existing Monk’s Walk.

The route continues beneath the new building, passing along the way a newly created garden equipment store (provided for local amenity groups) and finally arriving within the existing Monks walk public garden.

This sequence provides visual daily activity within the development and helps to closely integrate new residents within the existing community.

Located at ground level in close proximity to the building entrance, is a large residents lounge, honesty bar and relaxed kitchen area. This space has a dual aspect towards both the arrival cloister and associated pocket park and the more tranquil sun filled space of the communal courtyard at the heart of the development.

Glazed doors open out to a south facing sheltered seating area within the court, enabling residents to socialise and relax in the summer sun. A dual facing central fireplace and hearth is located between the entrance reception hall and communal lounge, providing a warm and inviting focus for the winter months.

Covered communal south facing balconies are located at first and second floors in a staggered arrangement to avoid overshadowing. This will enable less mobile residents to converse and interact with neighbours on all floors without the need to venture far from their individual apartments. “....Our euphoria has been enhanced by the attire and character of the building itself...Although this is a modern high spec building it is also reminiscent of a building that has grown organically over time...and one which enhances and enriched the lives of its residents.”

George and Wendy Arblaster, Residents of Chapter House, Lichfield

Walled gardens sheltered environments Historical maps of Lichfield, such as the map by John Snape from 1781, reveals a history of walled gardens around the Friary and in the local area.

The design for Chapter House embraces the concept of the protected walled environment, both in connection with the walled gardens around the building and with reference to the internal environment that seeks to provide a sheltered setting for retirement living.

This is also reflected in the arrangement of the accommodation and in the continuity and materiality of the external facades of the building. The external envelope is formed by a strongly defined brick skin that wraps around the development, linking internal and external spaces and at the same time forming a spatial and historical relationship with the existing ancient wall which forms the eastern boundary to the site boundary.

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1: Map of Lichfield, 1781, John Snape © Staffordshire Record Office 2: Monk’s Walk entrance 3: View into inner landscaped courtyard 4: View from Monk’s Walk towards inner courtyard 5: View from Monk’s Walk of gabelled elevation 6: Existing walled garden, Monk’s Walk 7: Monk’s Walk garden

Architectural language townscape elements and materiality

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The roofscape of the Chapter House draws heavily on the rich architectural and townscape language that can be found in the historic buildings of Lichfield. High pitched gabled roofs with expressive brick chimneys have become a characteristic of the area from the early days of St John’s Hospital and the Franciscan Friary and are referenced in the new design. The new prominent gable at the entrance to the building and the existing gable of the medieval Bishop’s Lodging form two ‘bookends’ which frame the newly designed landscape and the publically accessible Friary Garden park.

Careful attention has been given to the texture and materiality of the building. The entrance cloister is lined with vertical oak boarding to give a sense of warmth and quality at the threshold to the internal spaces of the development. The upper storeys offer deep reveals to windows set within thick, protective textured brickwork walls. The distinctive, vertically ribbed ‘corduroy’ brickwork (a mixture a red and Staffordshire blue bricks) to the upper floors is configured to visually mitigate the height of the building and again provide a feeling of warmth and texture to the exterior facades. The use of contrasting white bricks within the central court helps to bounce light around the space, creating a bright and inviting landscaped focal space at the heart of the development.

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1A: Concept sketch – walled garden 1B: Concept sketch – walled car park 1C: Concept sketch – new frontage 1D: Concept sketch – pedestrian connectivity 1E: Concept sketch – arrival space 2: ‘A South West Prospect of the Friary, Lichfield’ 1778 © William Salt Library 3: West elevation showing marker chimney 4: Gable elevation with corduroy brickwork

Hip-Hop memories: moving through places space and time

2019 will mark the 40th anniversary of The Sugar Hill Gang’s ’Rapper’s Delight’, the song widely regarded as the first ever Hip-Hop track. Though its origins are firmly routed within African-American and Latino communities in New York during the late 1970s, the genre today is one of the most popular worldwide, its prominent stars often stand out as the most listened to artists atop any chart or metric. Starting as a new form of personal and communal expression on a hyper-localised level, in its near 40 years of existence the genre has transcended borders and cultures, its influence felt just as firmly in present day Japan as in its spiritual home of New York.

At its core, Hip-Hop has always had a strong connection to its sense of place. Geographical actualities have helped to shape the genre both lyrically, and sonically. In a sense, Hip-Hop’s relationship to its locality is both surface level, and sub-textual. Since its inception, though perhaps in varied forms and styles, Hip-Hop has been about storytelling.

The genre was built on retelling the realities of life, and by necessary extension, life within specific communities. In this way, Hip-Hop narratives were built up with an explicit description of contextualised issues. Underneath a surface sense of descriptive narrative, however, is the notion that the genre is not just a way to talk about place. Hip-Hop is acutely moulded by place. It is not just lyrical content that is localised through Hip-Hop music, its sound is engaged in a symbiotic relationship with its geographical context.

Hotbeds of American Hip-Hop such as Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, all have their own sonic identities that feed off their own specific localities.

Lyrically, Hip-Hop’s sense of place will naturally always be localised in one way or another. The way music is consumed in the internet age, however, is starting to change how sound and geography are connected. When New York artist A$AP Rocky first began to gain traction in the Hip-Hop scene, his sonic style came under-fire for taking heavy inspiration from Houston’s laid back, chopped and screwed sound. For Rocky, however, growing up with access to an unlimited archive of music online meant that he could take cues from anywhere and anyone. Being from New York didn’t tie Rocky down to a specific style as it might have done in the early days of the genre, instead Hip-Hop’s eclectic background allowed him to explore a personal connection to a plethora of different sounds. In a sense, Hip-Hop is able to sonically transcend its hyper-localised beginnings.

Beyond the simple dissemination of geographically specific styles, tones and cadences, Hip-Hop moves through time and space seamlessly, shifting its focus without losing its identity. Indeed, as with any art-form, Hip-Hop is constantly evolving. Hip-Hop in 2017 sounds, and feels, very different to the Hip-Hop of the late 70s, 80s, and 90s. Comparing one of 2017’s most listened to Hip-Hop songs, Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3”1 to “Rapper’s Delight”, illustrates a genre that is far removed from the break-beats and socio-political commentary of its predecessors.

As a contemporary Hip-Hop superstar, Lil Uzi Vert has become the figurehead of a new wave of artists obsessed with melody in place of traditional lyricism and often citing influences outside of the more conventional sphere of the genre. Lil Uzi, for example, has garnered much attention for his affinity to Punk Rock in place of homage to Hip-Hop’s earliest pioneers. Indeed, as each new generation of Hip-Hop artists seems to stray further away from its origins, criticisms that the genre has forgotten its roots become ever-more vehement. At its core, however, Hip-Hop has always been about re-contextualisation. Just because contemporary artists may cast their net of inspiration in a different direction to that of their musical ancestors, does not mean that the genre’s eclectic landscape owes any less to its history.

The ability of Hip-Hop artists to draw upon collective memory in order to forge new sounds that connect with a changing audience is intrinsically linked with the genre’s obsession with sampling.

1 The song has amassed over 147 million plays on youtube and sits at number 8 on the billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

Since its inception, Hip-Hop music has relied on taking certain sounds, riffs, or hooks and re-purposing them, giving them new meaning in a new context. Kanye West, one of popular music’s most recognisable names, originally established himself within the industry for his unique reworking of classic 80s Soul samples in a contemporary Hip-Hop context. Taking moments, or sound bites, that form part of the genres legacy has become a hallmark of HipHop music, allowing it to change and progress in different directions whilst also remaining tethered to its past.

A case study for the way in which Hip-Hop music re-contextualises classic sounds is Jamaican Dancehall icon Beenie Man’s classic, “Memories”. Itself a twist on a 1975 Tom Jones song, the track has been sampled on several occasions by prevalent Hip-Hop artists. The most high-profile instance of the song’s chorus making its way onto a contemporary Hip-Hop track is Kanye West’s “Send it Up”, the eighth track on his highly divisive album Yeezus.

Less well known, though perhaps more poignant in the wider landscape of Hip-Hop music, Mos Def2 2 also riffs on Beenie Man’s chorus for his 1999 song with DJ Honda “Travellin’ Man”. On this song, Mos Def takes Beenie Man’s bold objection to living in the past and subverts its meaning, using the chorus to soften the blow to an imaginary lover who he tells he must leave in order to pursue his goals.

“Memories don’t live like people do, they always ’member you. Whether things are good or bad, it’s just the memories that you have.”

Beanie Man, Memories Whilst often cited as one of the best storytellers in the genre, Mos Def’s ode to memories transcends pure narrative, instead offering a personification of Hip-Hop music itself.

For Mos Def, Hip-Hop is a travelling man “movin’ through places, space, and time”. In this metaphor the genre is not static. Hip-Hop moves, darts, shifts, and changes, yet always maintains its memory, its link to the past. Be it through a sense of place or specific stylistic evolutions, the genre always looks back in order to look forward. The song’s re-contextualised chorus offering us the reassurance that as times change, it is our connection to our memories that ground us. In this sense, therefore, for Hip-Hop music to be great, it does not have to be linear. The beauty of the genre, and perhaps its most unique quality, is that it simultaneously maintains a recognisable identity and a unending commitment to innovation. Even when it seems to be at its most disconnected, Hip-Hop will always be tied to its collective memory.

Josh Proctor is a freelance writer and pop-culture enthusiast. He is currently studying International Relations at the University of Edinburgh.

Photography ‘DJ Quik sign’ © Jay Shells www.jayshells.com

2 Now Yasiin Bey, the artist was known for the majority of his music career as ‘Mos Def’

John Dower House Cheltenham John Dower House is a later living residential development located in Cheltenham’s central conservation area and immediately adjacent to the Grade II* listed Royal Crescent.

When complete it will provide 68 one and two bedroom apartments supported by community facilities that animate the frontage of a new public realm. The project is one of a series that represents a new form of residential community, one that offers greater opportunities for urban integration and with a programme that can engage, contribute and embrace the regeneration of our inner cities.

The site had previously been a stable yard and mews providing support accommodation to the adjacent Grade 2 listed John Dower House.

Throughout Cheltenham there are a series of historic precedents for ‘controlled’ yet semi-private courts or cloisters that link different parts of the city and indeed an alleyway across the site had once linked Clarence Street with St Georges Place. Inspired by the memory of these places and Cheltenham’s rich history, the proposal adopts a number of contextual design strategies that integrate the project into its sensitive surroundings. The eventual consolidation of these sites provided an opportunity to once again create a public pedestrian route through the site, diagonally linking St. George’s Place and Clarence Streets, and extending a new 21st Century route that now passes through Wilson’s Art Gallery, before leading onto the tranquil landscape surroundings of St. Mary’s Church.

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1: Perspective view of hidden courtyard with seasonal balconies 2–3: Sketch models of inner ‘Theatrical’ space 4: Perspective view along St. George’s Street 5: Perspective view of small water square 6–8: Aerial views of development with adjacent townscape markers

Location: Cheltenham Site area:

0.36 ha

Density:

188 dph

No. of units: 68 Tenure mix:

100% private

Team:

Proctor and Matthews Architects, Camlins Landscape Architects, Barton Willmore, Hydrock, WSP, Donald Insall Associates

Client: PegasusLife

Local authority: Project status:

Cheltenham Borough Council Under construction

Key narrative The architectural composition was conceived to enhance the differing urban characters of the surrounding streets and inner courts, a typological precedent evident in other historic parts of the city. The site’s embedded location within an existing urban block provides an opportunity to deliver a sequence of hidden spaces linked by water; which includes a rill leading to a small water square. The ‘ad hoc’ nature of the existing fabric is reconciled by the proposed built form to provide clarity and structure to the new public realm.

The theatrical qualities of this hidden space – reminiscent of galleried Elizabethan public houses – are further enhanced with distinctive balconies that include mini greenhouses, allowing for more active use and animation of these private amenity spaces throughout the seasons. The design of these elements makes reference to the strong Cotswold craft tradition celebrating an honest expression of material and assembly. The scale and robust quality of the circular William Morris table (exhibited in the Wilson Art Gallery on Clarence Street) embodies the timeless qualities of the Arts and Crafts tradition.

The proposed materials have been selected to respond directly to each façade’s immediate context. The St George’s Place façade will consist of a dominant palette of red brick, in reference to the brick facades of Cantay House and the former Crescent Bakery (which sit either side). The remaining facades visible from within the urban block will consist of white painted brickwork with white perforated brick panels. Timber elements found in balcony and window detailing are used as a ‘material thread’ linking each of the differing facades together.

Hidden courtyards defining a new public realm sequence The new pedestrian route has clearly marked gated thresholds that pass beneath building structures on St George’s Place and Clarence Street. The design incorporates ‘hidden’ courtyards that are revealed sequentially as the visitor or pedestrian pass along the new public realm. It is proposed that this new route is open to the public during daylight hours and gated at night. This hidden world is given an ‘arcadian’ atmosphere reminiscent of college courts or monastic cloisters.

Principle entrances to private courtyards and the accommodation, above are accessed from this route with private landscape spaces providing further tranquil spaces for residents. A south facing arcade provides a covered space next to the community lounge allowing residents to sit out, drink coffee and engage with the life of the city.

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1: Concept diagram: new and extended pedestrian route 2: Concept diagram: connecting fragmented landscapes 3: Concept diagram: a theatrical inner world 4: Aerial view with Royal Crescent in foreground 5: Figure Ground showing site location 6: Ground floor plan showing hidden courtyard 7: Strozzi Palace folly – Clarence Street, Cheltenham 8: Pallazo Davanzati with articulated attic storey – Florence, Italy

Balcony assembly extending seasonal use The accommodation has been designed to support the older residents that will live at John Dower House. As well as the communal lounge; a gym, a small cinema and games room further support the developing community. As many of the future residents will most probably spend extended periods of time in their apartments the internal / external space relationships are of great importance.

Each balcony, accessed from the principal living space of each home, is designed to maximise seasonal use and incorporates a ‘greenhouse window box’, sliding privacy screen and protective canopy. The balconies are designed as ‘external’ rooms, providing extended seasonal use and adjustable levels of privacy if required or deemed desirable by each resident.

The staggered balcony arrangement within the courtyard will allow a dialogue to occur between neighbours and hopefully nurture a sense of community amongst residents.

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1: Long section through hidden courtyard with articulated attic storey 2: White Hart Inn 1790 – galleried public house, Southwark, London 3: Sketch elevation of balcony facade 4: Sketch elevational detail of balcony assembly 5: William Morris table 1856 – Wilson Art Gallery and Museum Cheltenham 6: Balcony assembly drawings

Building on Memories: a community project in Bangladesh

The Rajapur village symbolises the place where my late father was born and grew up while he was a little boy and where I recall the time and the place my sisters and I spent our school holidays with our parents.

Rajapur village is quite a contrast to London, where I grew up. For many years we did not return to Rajapur after my father had passed away. After I completed my degree in architecture, I wanted to recall those memories of my childhood, of the time spent with my father, to reconnect with my roots and to help the disadvantaged communities of rural Bangladesh.

I found that there are communities living in the Rajapur village and the surrounding villages with a lack of access to education and healthcare and where basic essentials for living a healthy life and the opportunity to be self-sufficient are not readily available. The majority of girls in rural Bangladesh do not continue their education beyond the age of 11. Due to cultural and economic pressures and with little else to inspire them, they fall into a familiar cycle: they work long hours to help their parents on their farms, they marry early resulting in child marriage, and they take on the responsibility of all household duties.

Whilst access to healthcare is already limited for all villagers of Rajapur, the situation is exacerbated for women. Due to cultural pressures, women are strongly discouraged from consulting the male doctors who make up the vast majority of healthcare professionals in rural Bangladesh.

Together with my mother, and my sisters, I co-founded the Mannan Foundation Trust (MFT), a UK registered charity, to address the imbalance in society for the villagers of Rajapur by providing support in both the short term and the long term. This was a dream of my late father Professor Mannan, who spent much of his life dedicated to the work of population education and development in Bangladesh.

The Mannan Foundation Trust is constructing a community building aimed to empower the women of Rajapur (and the surrounding villages) by providing income generation and literacy skills for women and the basic healthcare to villagers.

The building is constructed with local materials; rammed earth for the walls and bamboo for the structural frame, reviving traditional regional construction skills and assisting in the preservation of the historical heritage and vernacular architecture of rural Bangladesh: a rural tradition where vernacular forms and techniques are influenced by the users’ skills to craft and build the buildings with readily available material such as mud and bamboo. The villagers themselves are the designers, the builders, artists and craftsmen and live in handmade houses. This has inspired the design of the MFT community building.

The design of this project was developed to be a simple architectural model for rural Bangladesh that includes adaptive design principles founded upon “Community Participation”.

The bamboo was sourced from local bamboo gardens and treated on site to demonstrate to the community how to maintain the longevity of the material. The walls are composed with perforations to allow natural light into the building and for cross ventilation. Through several community participation workshops, the community ownership of the building is achieved giving the locals a sense of belonging.

This architectural proposal aims to empower disadvantaged rural women. Most rural women have the expertise to build their houses with mud within the boundaries of their own home. Women in rural communities adhere to a strict code of cultural practice, which do not allow them to work in public, side by side with men. Therefore while we tried to encourage the village women to engage with the building work on site, we found it difficult as their cultural practice did not support this.

As a compromise we employed women to build earth blocks at home and the blocks were brought on site to be used to construct the walls of the community building. This allowed women to be central to the construction process and to take ownership of the Rajapur Community Building.

This has empowered the women of Rajapur by increasing their self confidence, providing an ability to earn income; to become economically self-sufficient and to contribute to the local economy.

Rammed earth was chosen for a substantial part of the superstructure. This is a cheap material with high thermal mass, (which is conducive to the hot climate), and requires very little skill and equipment to construct.

Bamboo was chosen because it is inexpensive and readily available, easy to handle and has a high strength to mass ratio. Its form is also suitable in the creation of perforated walls for ventilation and as a sacrificial rainscreen that protects the main structure from the monsoon climate.

The monsoon climate and topography of the site means the building is potentially subject to flooding. To overcome this, the substructure design takes the form of a raised concrete plinth to bring the building above the flood water level.

This community building takes the form of the memories left behind through the construction methods. The users and the community builders of the building will connect the past to the present and the future. Each handmade earth block is an imprint, a mark by individuals from the community, recording the memories of those who built it. The earth block walls also assist in creation of memories of the community users as they experience the spaces within the earth walls and benefit from the services of healthcare and education provided to the village community.

This building also has a personal connection as it represents the legacy of my late father and acts as a reminder to my mother, my sisters and myself, of the memories of the time spent with my late father in the Rajapur village.

It is an expression of the healing time and a time that no longer exists.

The building design and construction makes distinct reference to the historical and cultural traditions of Rajapur village and the wider community. It also provides a physical reminder to the professionals, fundraisers and volunteers who have helped realise the Rajapur Women’s Literacy and Healthcare Centre, that their efforts directly improve the lives of the disadvantaged rural people.

If you would like to support or find out more about the project please visit: www.mannanfoundationtrust.org Tumpa Husna Yasmin Fellows is a co-founder and trustee of the Mannan Foundation Trust and a Project Architect at Proctor and Matthews Architects.

Photography: The Mannan Foundation Trust

Hargood Close Colchester Hargood Close is a supported housing scheme in Colchester, providing a home for vulnerable people in need of emergency temporary accommodation. It is a replacement for a notorious, sub standard facility which once occupied the site. The design brief was to address the negative memories associated with the location and offer a positive way forward for future supported housing in Colchester. Completed in 2013, the development’s design successfully meets the needs of homeless individuals and their families at a difficult time in their lives. Inspired by the form of 19th Century local Almshouses, the buildings and landscaped spaces have been designed to emulate the domestic character of this traditional housing model.

Accommodation consists of 35 dwellings and includes a mix of studios, one and two bedroom dwellings and family houses. Unit types provide flexibility for staff to respond to the differing living requirements of its changing tenants. In addition, the design offers improved spaces for both onsite and visiting staff, a communal space, meeting rooms and a secure children’s play area. The development is now considered to be a UK Centre of Excellence , providing much needed support for homeless people within the region.

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1: First floor access ‘cloister’ 2: Initial concept sketch 3: Courtyard facade detail with perforated screen and storage ‘buttresses’ 4: Stair tower marking corner of courtyard 5–6: Central courtyard 7: Play space and communal meeting room

Location: Colchester Site area:

0.37 ha

Density:

94.6 dph

No. of units: 35 Client: Team:

Local authority:

Family Mosaic

Proctor and Matthews Architects (Design Team Leader), Richard Jackson, Stuart McCurry, BBUK, CNC Consultancy, ISG Jackson Colchester Borough Council

Project status: Completed

Key narrative Following the typical spatial arrangements of Almshouses, dwellings are grouped into six building clusters arranged around two landscaped courtyards.

The domestic scale and quality of the communal realm within traditional Almshouses provide a secure and friendly environment that nurtures a sense of community and encourages natural, passive surveillance to all shared spaces. At Hargood Close all accommodation opens out onto the central courtyard spaces encouraging informal encounters between the residents, facilitating social interaction. The community space and children’s play area are located in a pivotal location at the centre of the development and provide further opportunities for social gathering and the creation of neighbourly bonds.

Due to the transient nature of the accommodation, it is important that the development feels inviting and homely. Familiar materials such as brick and timber provide a warm palette of colours and textures. Highly textured and beautifully crafted brickwork panels give rhythm, scale and expression to the elevations and projecting patterned brickwork gables echo the historic Dutch gables common to Essex and the eastern region.

The domestic qualities of historic Almshouses are in part due to their craftsmanship. The language adopted for the new development rejects the need for historical pastiche, offering instead a 21st century interpretation of a highly successful housing model. Most importantly, it provides the residents with a welcoming environment that aids the creation of positive personal memories and collective good memories of Hargood Close.

On recently moving in to Hargood Close a 17 year old resident reported: “I’ve only been here for two weeks... but I can tell you that it’s been the best two weeks of my life”.

Courtyards provide spatial legibility As in historic Almshouse precedents, the simple courtyard configuration provides a legible and coherent spatial structure. All entrances and access routes are clearly identifiable and each unit can be clearly seen and accessed from the paved landscape courts. Cloisters and first floor walkways are arranged around each courtyard providing access and shelter to both the ground an upper floor entrances.

The courtyard arrangement also encourages passive, natural surveillance, helping to deliver a safe and protective environment for vulnerable residents. Staff maintain a 24/7 presence, discretely monitoring visitors to and from the development, and providing a caring environment for all inhabitants.

The courtyard arrangement encourages residents to meet together, form friendships in a safe, domestic , non-institutionalised environment.

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1: Ground floor plan 2: First floor plan 3: Winsley’s Almshouse, Colchester Essex 4: Abbey Farm and Almshouse Audley End, Saffron Walden 5: Section through courtyards

Materiality and craftsmanship A key feature of Hargood Close is its contextually responsive yet contemporary design, exhibiting an attention to detail and craftsmanship – a quality also associated with historic Almshouses. The use of patterned, textured brickwork, not only references the materials used in traditional Essex Almshouses but also reflects the warm colour tones of the neighbouring terraced houses, allowing Hargood Close to sit comfortably within its surroundings.

Perforated brickwork screens located on first floor cloistered walkways, help to spatial define well ventilated yet secure environments at the threshold to each dwelling, and on sunny days deliver a play of dappled sunlight on adjacent walls and walkway floors.

All surfaces, fixtures and fittings have been specified with regard to the needs of the building users. Hargood Close sees a high turnover of residents as most tenants are only there for a short period of time before more permanent accommodation can be arranged for them. The building therefore features a robust yet attractive palette of materials: brick, stainless steel, timber and exposed concrete all employed to minimise maintenance and yet simultaneously proving a warm and uplifting domestic environment.

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1: Perforated brickwork screen with dappled sunlight 2: Textured brickwork 3: ‘Dutch’ gable with textured patterned brickwork 4: Perforated brickwork panel and timber clad access walkway 5: Facade detail

A house at the end of life

That buildings act as symbols and embodiments of public memory is evident from a long history of their wilful destruction or desecration by occupying armies during times of war or conquest. No wonder that the architectural historian Robert Bevan called his detailed and shocking history of such brutal effacements, The Destruction of Memory (2006).

Buildings, artefacts and places imbued with a high level of symbolic public meaning, such as churches, synagogues, mosques, libraries, public monuments and even cemeteries, have been the principal targets for obliteration, as a way of undermining public morale and erasing cultural identity.

But the symbolic, eidetic power that buildings and places exercise in public memory is only one aspect of the complex relationship between architecture and memory, place and affectivity. On a more intimate level, as Gaston Bachelard articulated so profoundly in The Poetics of Space (1958), the house is our first cosmos, and for most people the first and most enduring experience of ‘felicitous space’: space where the development of the private self is interwoven with the material world of bricks and mortar, rooms and ceilings, doors and windows, cupboards and stairs, light and warmth, darkness and mystery.

At their best buildings possess both a powerful symbolic presence in the townscape, along with interior richness of detail and sense of occasion. It was for this reason I first became interested in what was becoming a new building type: the hospice. There had been hospices for many hundreds of years, but what is termed the new hospice movement began with the opening of St Christopher’s Hospice in Sydenham in 1967, designed by architects Stewart, Hendry & Smith, under the aegis of Cicely Saunders (shortly after to be Dame Cicely Saunders).

The origins of St Christopher’s came from a small bequest made to Saunders by a patient she had befriended and cared for soon after the war, David Tasma, a Polish refugee, with whom she had discussed the idea of a special place where the terminally ill could be treated. The bequest from Tasma came with the appeal: ‘Let me be a window in your home.’ That window became a defining feature of the new building, and can still be seen.

Historically, hospices were religious buildings set aside for the sick and the dying. The dominant ethos was hope for spiritual redemption through confessional prayer rather than the practical amelioration of physical pain and suffering.

As a nurse, Saunders had seen too many people die lonely, painful deaths in hospitals, and she was determined to create a place where, in a calm, non-medicalised environment, pain management and close personal care would allow individuals to die with dignity. St Christopher’s prioritised palliative care over religious ritual and observance – though Saunders herself and a number of her colleagues remained committed Christians.

Not only did this revival of the hospice come to be distinguished by the development of a new building type, equal attention was paid to the location and public impact of the building as to interior design and landscape setting.

Saunders had previously worked at St Joseph’s Hospice in Hackney, a traditional religious hospice established in 1905 on a busy thoroughfare. There she would have heard it said that for a long time many people, especially children, would cross over the road when they came to St Joseph’s, fearful of walking next to ‘the building where people go to die’.

Saunders was therefore determined that St Christopher’s would be a building that would become beloved, a symbol of serenity and loving care, not of despair.

She was adamant that it be located in a lively suburban setting, with good transport connections, rather than exiled to a distant rural hideaway or retreat (as many residential care homes are today). Since hospice care requires a 24 hour regime, Saunders and her colleagues envisioned the building as a suburban sentinel of the night, a lighthouse even, suggestive of life quietly going on whatever the hour.

In this way, St Christopher’s established a positive image of hospice buildings as inspiring additions to the contemporary civic townscape.

As to the interior, this was to be as far removed from the institutional atmosphere of a hospital as was possible.

No medical equipment to be seen, no notice-boards, tannoy announcements or harsh lighting; instead a warm domestic interior, comfortably furnished, with small wards and individual rooms designed to reinforce the domestic setting. Views of gardens, rather than car parks or mortuary buildings, have also been an essential element of the design brief. In recent years Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres have further developed this approach, resulting in a new generation of exceptional buildings, interiors and landscaped gardens. One hopes that lessons learned from the new hospice movement and the Maggie’s Centres – particularly concerning the positive impact of good design on people’s sense of well-being – will in time filter through to the public hospital system as well as the residential care home sector.

For the sick and the dying, particularly in hospital, so much time is experienced as waiting: waiting as clock time, as a form of endurance or trial by ordeal, an anxious counting down to an unknown end. The French word for waiting, attender, is much more suggestive by far, implying a sense of being attentive to what is going on, endlessly present. This is time as flow. Ideally, hospice space is designed to create settings in which the patient’s thoughts and memories can wander or flow free, undisturbed by institutional timetables, or, worse still, oppressed by an architecture of power (to borrow from Thomas A. Markus).

This is why in addition to the quality of the interior spaces, well-structured gardens are also important, bringing another form of time pressing up against the windows: the organic time of growth, change, loss and renewal. As the poet and gardener Ian Hamilton Finlay suggested, the chief ingredient of a garden is the weather. A constant display of changing skies and cloud forms, the play of light upon trees and ornamental grasses, the sound of wind and rain, clearly add to the patient’s visual and emotional world. Most hospice bedrooms today are designed at ground level, so that beds can be easily wheeled out on to a patio or directly into the garden, with patients sometimes dying peacefully outdoors beneath the shade of a tree.

Thus if the house is, as Bachelard suggested, the first cosmos, then in many ways the hospice is the last: a house at the end of life. If architecture can indeed shape memory and engender delight and tranquillity, then it is in our power to make people’s final experience of felicitous space as redemptive as their first, whatever happened in life, for good or bad, in between.

Ken Worpole writes on architecture, social history and landscape. His books include Modern Hospice Design: the architecture of palliative care (2009), Contemporary Library Architecture (2013) and New Jerusalem: the good city and the good society (2015).

Photography: Rydon Almshouses, Suffolk

Steepleton Tetbury The new Steepleton Retirement Community is located on the edge of Tetbury, in the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The design is inspired by the patterns of historic Cotswold farmsteads and the area’s strong Almshouse traditions.

The development contains 113 Later Living one and two bedroom apartments arranged in three storey courtyard clusters with larger maisonettes positioned above ground floor apartments. The self contained units provide living space, private kitchens and bathrooms, alongside generous private outdoor space and external storage. Sliding walls within each apartment offer greater spatial flexibility for adaptation as residents’ circumstances change.

The maisonettes make full use of the roof void volumes to enhance day lighting into each dwelling, and boost the sense of space within units by the incorporating double-height spaces.

A tall barn-like structure at the heart of the site – the ‘village hall’ – contains communal facilities including a large dining area and residents’ lounge, care and therapy provision, IT facilities and an exercise room. This building frames a central communal court with external swimming pond focus.

Outside there are landscaped gardens and allotments. Staff areas are also located within this central hub.

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1: Perspective view of typical courtyard and productive landscape 2: Sundial marker and village hall 3: Swimming pond 4: Model of cloistered courtyard 5: Model showing courtyard clusters

Location: Tetbury Site area:

5.0 Ha

Density:

23 dph

Design team:

Proctor and Matthews Architects Barton Willmore, Peter Brett Associates LLP, Max Fordham, Camlins Landscape Architects, WYG Management Services, Ecoschemes, Green Issues Communique

No. of units: 113

Client: PegasusLife

Local authority: Project status:

Cotswold District Council Under construction

Key narrative There is a long history of Almshouse typologies within the UK and specifically within the Cotswolds. Good examples exist such as Holloway and Townsend’s Almshouses on Church Green and the old Oxford Road both in Witney, from 1821 and 1868, and Sir Baptist Hicks’s Almshouses on Church Road, Chipping Campden, 1612.

This eighteenth century example is configured as a long Cotswold stone structured terrace of dwellings complete with eaves dormer windows and a low stone wall frontage to the street. This was originally part of the Hicks Jacobean Mansion complex, situated in close proximity to the church and structuring the rural edge of Chipping Campden.

The form of many Cotswolds Farms and Farmsteads located on the edge of villages and towns, exhibit a structured/formal control of the landscape in which they are sited. A good example of this is Manor Farm at Sapperton (a village to the north-east of Tetbury). Here a series of formally arranged farm courts at the edge of the village, are enclosed by a range of long pitched roofed barns and walls.

This series of farm courts or yards capture landscape and create a group of clearly organised protected spaces. They establish a local precedent for the concept of structured clusters of residential accommodation for the elderly: spaces with a strong identity and clarity of organisation which will help nurture a series of smaller community groupings within the wider framework of the later living village.

An important design armature used throughout the new scheme is the ‘ambulatory’ – a cloistered walkway at ground and first floor levels around each courtyard.

This is conceived not merely as a way of circulating through each cluster but provides generous space with seating areas for residents to meet, relax and interact.

Architecturally this stacked arcade breaks up the courtyard elevations and delivers an animated street frontage to both the public and semi public realms. It is this design device that acts as the principle thread linking and defining circulation as well as being a pivotal place of interaction.

Almshouse forms and Cotswold farmsteads The contemporary interpretation of historic farmstead and Almshouse forms is enhanced with careful detailing that sustains references to local vernacular buildings. Dormers, projecting bays and balcony hoods create a coherent yet varied architectural language to the streetscape of courtyard typologies. Chimneys for wood burning stoves and pronounced ‘twin gable’ façade composition echo the vernacular forms of the Cotswolds and the Arts and Crafts tradition. The ‘Village Hall’ set at the centre of the built form composition provides a townscape marker, complete with sundial, which visually signifies the heart of the new community.

Cotswold stone is used for ground level facades with a light stone coloured render for the upper walls. Traditional slate is used for pitched roofs with contemporary hidden gutters delivering a more defined form. Set at the front of the site, a dry stone construction unites the boundary wall and twinned gable pavilions that support the open courtyard form.

Complete with lychgate this composition provides a formal ‘Almshouse’ entrance to the retirement village.

Collective contemplation and private retreat As with other Proctor and Matthews Later Living schemes, Steepleton has a layered approach to thresholds maximising the distinction between places of community, quiet collective contemplation and private retreat. Each Courtyard cluster has a clearly defined entrance ‘barn’ a lofty generous space protected by large dark stained timber louvers that makes reference to nearby farm structures.

These give access to generous stairs, lifts, buggy stores and charging points.

Landscape has been designed as an integral part of the built environment, another strong tradition throughout the vernacular morphology of the Cotswolds. Parking is also integrated in open structures beneath buildings and adjacent to entrances. Shared surfaces throughout make the public realm a ‘people place’ and as with many historic Almshouses there is provision for productive landscapes within some of the courtyard spaces.

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1: Site plan, Steepleton 2–3: Manor Farm, Sapperton Village, Cotswolds 4: Model showing central hub and courtyard clusters 5–6: Study model for courtyard cloister 7: Assembly drawing of courtyard cloister

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1: Almshouse walled garden, Ewelme, Oxfordshire 2: Sir Baptist Hick’s Almshouses, Chipping Camden 1612 3: Twinned gable composition to Cirencester Road, Steepleton 4: Allnutt’s Hospital/Almshouse, Goring Heath, Oxfordshire 5: Arrival space, Steepleton

External storage: Gardening utensils Wellington boots

Seating bay: • Chess • Afternoon tea • Reading

Proctor & Matthews Architects 7 Blue Lion Place 237 Long Lane London SE1 4PU +44 (0)20 7378 6695 www.proctorandmatthews.com