Sound

“Dancing leaf shade patterns, lapping wavelets, gurgling streams, endlessly reforming clouds combine calming tempo with the security of a reliably constant world, but one constantly stimulating our senses to life”10

10. Author: Day, Christopher, Places of the Soul Architecture and Environmental Design as a Healing Art (Oxford: Architectural Press, Second Edition, 2004)

Life at the Complex is reaffirmed by the sounds of nature and human activity that permeate the buildings, bringing stimulation and feelings of reassurance to inhabitants.

Sound focuses;

- Connection to water; weir, river and lade

- Trees and plants

- Human life

The sensory connection of the Complex to its natural surroundings provides an ideal opportunity to connect the elderly to the outside world in an immediate and accessible way. Providing rich surroundings in which to live, the Caring Home is filled with the renewing sounds of flowing water;

- changing volumes as the river levels rise and lower

- cascade of the weir

- stream of the lade as it flows from the north of the park, joining with the White Cart underneath the Water Therapy Spa

Rustling trees and planting can be heard through open windows, changing through the seasons as leaves grow and drop.

The sounds of people inhabiting the courtyard is carried through the extension. Privacy and quiet can be found in the Sanctuary.

Public visitors to the Community Cafe and Garden can be heard, bringing together the sounds of a range of multi-generational people and families.

QR Code to YouTube Video of audio recording taken on a site visit in March. These sounds were heard beside the lade, in the proposed Community Garden.