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Healing Silence:
The Architecture of Peace
by Christopher Day
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Healing is a process
that can only take place from within ourselves, but this
process can be triggered and supported by things and
actions outside us. We can, therefore, talk about
healing environments and healing qualities of
environment. Of all the healing forces in the God-given
world around us, silence is perhaps the greatest. We
have seen the health-giving effects of processes,
activities and material qualities, but silence is
neither process, activity or object. It is… silence.
But what is silence?
Is it complete absence of sound? Where can we go in the
world and find absence of sound - no wind in grass, no
distant link of rock, no lap of water? Sound means life;
in quiet places, the ears sharpen to listen for it. We
even start to hear the sounds of our own body.
There is a lot of
difference between a resting and a dead body. A dead
animal looks different in the landscape to one lying
down; the wind plays with the hair as a lifeless surface
of something immovable. This is the silence of death. To
experience literal silence you have to go into a special
sound-absorbing chamber - it is a strange feeling.
Sensory deprivation experiments have shown that if all
the senses are denied stimulus, the life processes are
brought into a crisis so acute that within seconds a
risk of life develops. Literal silence is not life
supporting: it is the opposite.
Or is silence the
absence of noise? Even noise is hard to define: is it
insects on a quiet summer's day, waves on rocks, wind in
trees or over snow? But there is plenty more noise than
that around us. The average house is full of
noise-producing equipment - refrigerators, deep
freezers, central-heating furnaces and pumps, ticking
electric clocks and so on, all dead mechanical sounds,
not sounds of life like speech, music, crackling fire,
wind in the chimney, rain on glass. Out of doors cities
have constant background noise you cannot get away from.
In the countryside how far do we have to go not to hear
a hi-fi, car, chainsaw, milking-machine or aeroplane?
When you listen, almost everywhere within easy access of
where we live there is mechanical noise most of the
time. In this century silence - freedom from mechanical
noise - has become a threatened species, extinct in many
areas.
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We live in a noisy
world: whether we notice it or not, noise affects us.
Physiological effects, starting at 65 dBA with mental
and bodily fatigue, are well established (SV Szockolay, Man-environment
sonic relation, [Course notes: E 13] Polytechnic of
Central London, p. 9.). This is typical city noise level
(Typical values, 10% of the time 7am-7pm all use zones
in Inner London - Traffic noise: Urban Design
Bulletin 1, GLC, 1970). Main-road kerbside noise,
typically at 75 dBA, is over twice as loud and motorways
nearly double again at 83 dBA (Every increase of 10 dBA
represents a doubling of apparent loudness). Street
noise can reach 90 dBA causing heart stress (Ian McHarg,
Design with Nature, Doubleday/Natural History
Press, New York, 1971, p. 195). Much lower levels, such
as background fan noise, interfere with sleep, digestion
and thought (David Wyon, Det Sunda Huset, p.
196). We easily become conditioned to low-level noise
and don't notice it at all. That it causes tension is
however demonstrated by the great relief we feel
whenever it suddenly stops.
Noise, in other words,
is harmful to human health; it is a recognized
environmental pollutant. There are well-established
techniques for noise-abating design. Distance,
obstruction (for instance by walls, banks, buildings),
absorption (for instance by vegetation, which can also
act as a fume filter), zoning of sensitive and tolerant
areas and masking (for instance by rustling leaf, moving
water or living sounds) can all mitigate outdoor noise.
Where aggressive movement such as fast traffic is the
source of noise, it often helps to screen it visually.
Intermittent noises such as trains on the other hand are
less of a shock if you can see and hear them
approaching. Noises from living sources such as school
playgrounds can be less irritating if you can see what
is going on. Outdoor noise penetrates indoors mainly
through openable windows. When noise and air pollution
sources coincide, as they often do, windows facing this
way can be sealed (and double-glazed, absorbent lined,
etc.). Indoor noise can be reduced with absorbent
materials, room shape and control of noise-making at
source.
There is of course
more to noise control than I have here outlined, but
however thorough our measures we cannot hope to achieve
silence. With, for instance, triple glazing and
absorbent indoor surfaces we can make acoustically dead
environments, but that is not the same as silence. Yet
silence is something we need to have access to, for
while noise is stressful silence is healing.
Where in the world can
we go to find this sort of silence? And for those who
can afford the expense, how much noise does travelling
there cause? Once place to go is within oneself. Many
seek inner silence through meditation, but it is not
easy to keep inner noise at bay. But if we are to design
healing environments we need to create qualities of holy
silence that are accessible for all, not just for
globetrotters and meditators but especially for those
who lack the outer or inner means.
Even if we can't define
silence, we can recognize it. Gentle, unobstructive,
calming, life-supporting, holy sounds allow us to be
quiet within: eternal sounds, sounds of the breath of
air, the quiet endlessness of water - definitely not
sounds of the ephemeral moment however calming. Cows
chewing the cud and bumble-bees droning are calming,
almost soporific, but they are not eternal. Silence,
tranquillity and the eternal have a lot to do with each
other.
It's even harder to
define silent architecture but likewise easy to
recognize it. There is dead silent or living silent
architecture. To create living silent architecture we
need to understand and work with the essential qualities
of living silence: the gentle, the unobtrusive, the
tranquil, the eternal, the life-supporting, the holy.
As a foundation of
tranquillity we need balance. This often means focus and
axis. Symmetry is rigid, rigidity excludes life. Balance
is life filled and breathes from one side to the other.
Balance is also a matter of scale and proportion. Rooms
can be quite small - monks' cells were often little more
than the space to lie and stand in. The smaller a room
is, the more modest, plain, ascetic and quiet it can be
- furniture is an intrusion. Such a room is for a
specific purpose, but not a silent place within
the stream of daily life. If the proportions, textures,
light and other qualities are not just right, a small
room is a trap, a larger one can often get away with it
although you can start to rattle around, and its silence
can begin to feel empty. Too large a space can be too
awe inspiring. The human being is too insignificant
beside the power of architectural scale. Those
cathedrals that are places of silence (and there are not
so many, for more are places of awe) are not the largest
ones, their scale reduced by the way they are built of
tiers of elements. The gestures of the Romanesque ones
tie them down firmly to the earth. Imagine such a
cathedral plastered and painted uniformly - in
simplicity its size would be too strong - certainly it
would not be silent!
Proportion determines
whether places can be at rest or whether they have a
directional dynamic and the feeling that goes with it.
Awe, expectation or soothing can be produced with
upward, forward or all-round horizontal emphasis.
Proportions at balance reflect balance in the human body
and induce a mood of balance in the soul.
Proportions that are
too high, too wide, too long - like lines that are too
dynamic or spaces that ate too strongly focal - risk
being too compelling. I want to leave the occupant free.
I try to be careful, therefore, not to have too strong
an emphasis. Indeed for a place of silence I try to
underplay the architecture generally so that it is not
intrusive. This means a certain simplicity. Simplicity,
enshrined in the modern movement, is often experienced
by non-architects as boring. Some buildings need to be
less simple, some more so. Places of silence need to be
simple - but how can reverent simplicity be achieved
without boredom?
I approach simplicity
like this: the space can generally be entered and
focused axially but slight variation from one side to
another, slight ambiguities in form and, most
particularly, living lines (flare at the base of the
walls, curved qualities in the almost straight and
straight in the curved and so on) give the space a
quality of life - so too with straighter, but not
colliding, lines does the texture of wood, even if its
colour variation is muted by stains or lazure veils.
This life is further enhanced by the light. Where the
windows are placed, how they are shaped, how the light
is quieted - for instance divided by glazing bars
reflected off splayed windows or filtered through
vegetation - can enhance the interplay between daylight,
sunlight and reflected light which is so crucial to the
mood of a room.
Light needs texture to
play on. Again I am looking for a life-filled, but
unobtrusive, gentle texture. I commonly use
hand-finished render (9 coarse sand: 2 lime: I cement,
applied not by float but with a round-nosed trowel so as
to obtain gentle undulations without tool score marks,
finished with a [gloved] hand when it has started to
firm upon the wall [about an hour later but depends on
conditions]). This can bring gentleness, life,
conversational softening of changes in plane and -
because of the absolute necessity that the plasterer is
aesthetically involved - soul is impregnated into the
room. This certainly is not the only material, nor is it
everywhere appropriate, but where it is it is one of my
favourites. Being applied to block-work and requiring
more sensitivity than skill, it has the additional
advantage of being cheap and well-suited to gift work or
self-build.
I've been in spatially
simple rooms which lack any life in their texture.
Smooth-plastered, smooth painted rooms, even the
woodwork gloss painted. To be alone, quiet, in such a
room is to be in a prison. You need a radio,
hi-fi or television for company to fill the empty space,
to bring a kind of life. I aim to make rooms in which
you do not need these supports, rooms that will be alive
with sunlight or candlelight, birdsong outside or with
grey dawn, twilight and silence.
Texture-less rooms
need wallpaper or colour schemes to give interest, to
paint a superficial individuality upon their surface. I
use colour for a different function, so different that
when a client says, 'I have these curtains, I want a
colour scheme to go with them', I am at a loss to know
what to do: I use colour to create a mood. Yet often,
for silence, the indoor colour I use is white. White,
justifiably, has a bad reputation; it's the colour
people use when they can't think of anything else. But
it is the colour I use when I don't want anything
else, when I want silence. Some people think white is
not a colour, but the right white (there are many -
think of the difference between lime wash, emulsion and
gloss paint, not to mention all the different colours of
white) can sing! White is the mother of all the colours
- it has in it all the moods that each individual can
develop as an individuality - white can be calm,
life-filled, joyous, timeless, whereas blue can only be
calm and risks being cold or melancholic; orange can be
full of life, welcoming, but risks being too forceful,
even discordant; yellow can be joyous but risks being
too active; I have never seen more eternal qualities
than in Vermeer's paintings, yet brown risks being too
heavy, dark, oppressively entrapping.
However, where the
room or window shape is rectilinear with smooth surfaces
and sharp arises, I would certainly not use white—it
would be altogether too hard. In such a room white would
emphasize any noise. Research on colour and perceived
noise does indeed show white rooms to sound loudest
(Kenneth Bayes, The Therapeutic Effect of Environment
on Emotionally Disturbed and Mentally Subnormal Children,
Gresham Press, 1970, p.33). When we use it we therefore
need to be particularly attentive to qualities of shape,
texture and light or indeed it will seem noisy. The
quietest colour for a room has been found to be purple.
In ancient times purple was not a colour anyone could
use, its use on clothing restricted to a certain
spiritual rank. Even today, less sensitive to the
'beings of colour' as we are, it doesn't seem quite
appropriate for everyday use; a purple kitchen doesn't
feel quite right.
I use particular
colours when I wish to emphasize a particular mood. Red
can bring warmth, stimulation, passion and
aggressiveness (Ibid., p. 32). With all colours,
associative qualities such as coolness with blue are
bound up with physiological effects upon the organs and
metabolism. Yellow for instance can bring light to a
sunless room; it can also bring vitality and
cheerfulness. Green is calming and refreshing; it is the
colour of surgical gowns and actor's 'greenrooms'. The
meditation room (shown earlier) is to be lazured in
bluish purple.
In therapy, coloured
light has been shown to be more effective than pigments
(Ibid., p. 32). Coloured windows only feel at
home in specific sorts of place (such as churches) but
coloured light can be achieved by reflection. Opaque
colours are forceful and dominating, translucent lazure
is therefore both more acceptable and more effective
than opaque pigment. Brick tile and timber with dark
rich weavings bring warmth. We even designed a theatre
to be painted inside in grey (not a flat grey but one
made up of thin veils of red, blue, green); this was
also to be a focal, unobtrusive space, but not a place
of silence!
Similarly I try to
make silent, sacred rooms plain. These rooms need to be
somehow above any more specific mood. When the circular
meditation chapel (see page 73) was nearing completion
it looked so attractive inside with its exposed radial
rafters that many people wanted them left like that. I
felt that they created a warm cosy atmosphere with
noticeable architecture, appropriate for a living room
perhaps, but not for a chapel, especially not for the
silent, spirit--renewing focus of a retreat centre. I
offered to pull the ceiling off if people didn't like
it: fortunately I didn't have to.
In the same way that
colours can be too individual so can material. The
difference is that certain materials are the right
materials for the place and it doesn't feel right - or
may not be practical -to use other ones. In some
countries brick, stone or timber is the only suitable
choice and I have experienced wonderfully sacred places
in diverse materials. Generally there needs to be very
few different materials. Often I use only three: walls
and ceiling of the same finish, running without break
into each other and unified by a single uninterrupted
colour; wooden doors and windows, unpainted but possibly
stained or translucently lazured, and a texturally
inviting floor of a colour to warm reflected light -
usually wood, brick, tile or carpet. Unity of materials
and colours has a quietening influence and for that
reason they need to have sufficient life in them or the
whole place will slide into lifelessness.
The shapes, forms and
spaces need therefore to have gentle movement. The
static resolution of the right angle lacks life.
Dramatic or dynamic forms and gestures have an excess of
force. To have both movement and stability, gesture
needs to answer gesture in a life-filled, harmonic
conversation - not repetition but resolution,
transforming what the other says so that it is just
right for its particular location, neighbours, material
and function. Quiet harmony is the product of a quietly
singing conversation.
Perhaps the most
essential quality is timelessness. A painting can be
timeless, so can a building. Obviously the painting has
to avoid anything that finds its resolution in time
outside the moment - like someone kicking a ball. The
same with a building. This doesn't only mean qualities
which are both traditional and modern at the same time;
it also means resolution of the sculptural forces - of
gesture, of gravity, of structural and visual tension.
Dead things are stable, immovable, but they are left
behind by time. The eternal lives in every moment.
It can help if one
practises timelessness exercises. I like to paint
uneventful balanced landscapes (of the soul imagination
- not real ones) bathed with peaceful light, trying
always to find that which is eternal, not momentary. I
have mentioned the principle of balance, giving
stability and permanence without rigidity. Buildings
which belong in a place, which are rooted in the earth,
can be developed to be timeless, eternal. Buildings
which don't never can be. In addition to the shaping of
walls and ground, as discussed earlier, planting at the
building-ground junction and climbing plants on walls
can help.
As far back as I can
remember I have looked closely at how rocks rise out of
the earth. Some are half buried boulders, some are the
protruding bones of the earth. Some mountains are the
earth itself pushed through or draped with covering but
now at repose. It is where they are at the firmest
rooted and least dramatic that they are the most
eternal. This as much as anything - the landscape I have
grown up with - has sharpened my feeling for
timelessness.
Other people in other
surroundings may not be so lucky. For occupants
therefore this means creating these qualities in the
buildings we design. For designers it means developing
sensitivities through exercise, observation and focused
concentration. To be timeless something needs to feel
inevitable, right - so much so that we can no longer
imagine something other than the way it is.
The building for
instance needs to be in the inevitable place on the
site. That is not always easy! Sometimes a site asks for
something somewhere, sometimes it doesn't. The hardest
site I have ever had was flat, featureless, with only
short-lived caravans on it; nothing to grow from,
nothing to create a place between, nothing to relate to.
Usually, however, listening to the place will give one a
progressively strengthening conviction that this
building should be here.
Buildings are not just
in isolation. As we design them, we are also concerned
with the whole entry experience. Externally we can
develop this experience progression to enhance the
inevitability of the building we eventually reach.
Indoors we can carry this preparatory experience further
until we reach the place to stop - a sanctuary of rest.
We can enhance the experience by making physical
thresholds wherever there is a change of mood by using
darker, lower, narrower passages, cloisters,
tree-overhung paths, leading to a portal - a substantial
door with a heavy latch, which one is conscious
of opening. Then, with a conscious step, one passes into
another place, a place to stop - the place of calm,
protected, enclosing. A glass box is not a place to find
inner calm in silence. Its function is to wash one
inwardly clean with the forces of the landscape. In more
densely settled surroundings one can feel a bit as
though in a display cage, certainly not at peace!
This progression of
experience is made up of the same vocabulary that is
available in most homes or places of work: thresholds,
emphasized by portals, doors and latches, places to move
in and places to stop. It can be enhanced by making
these more conscious. I like hand-made wooden latches
that you really feel and with a movement that gives you
a conscious bodily experience of opening or closing a
door. I like low (or broad so as to have a lower
proportion) doorways with arched or shaped heads, low,
dark, arched or shaped ceiling passageways, slightly
twisting, leading to quiet light-enlivened (not
necessarily bright, and certainly not dramatic) rooms of
a stable proportion.
These daily rituals,
repeated thousands of times, can have healing effect.
Even in places of work, and especially in homes,
architecture has the function of providing rest for the
soul.
When we come home from
a stressful day, the home and the night are for renewal.
If they don't provide it, stress builds up on stress and
physical or psychological collapse follows. When we go
to bed at night we pass into another world and are
reborn each morning. How much care and worry can be
washed away by sleep! We enter each new day with hope -
how otherwise can we survive?
But what haven of calm
do we come home to when its inmost sanctum is full of
mechanical noise - TV perhaps? How do we bring the
nightly renewal of rebirth each morning when we are
wakened by an alarm-radio? It's not just people's habits
I am talking about, but rooms that need noise to keep
you company. Many houses, many rooms need
noise. If we are going to try to provide places where
people can live in health, places where people gain
rather than lose strength, grow rather than wither, we
need to make places where silence can be a welcome
guest, where silence can fill the space with its
renewing, healing power. This doesn't just mean good
sound insulation; it means places of silent quality - to
sight, touch, smell and so on - not just noiseless
places, but places of healing silence.
Christopher Day trained as an architect and
sculptor. In addition to designing buildings in accordance with his ecological principles, he
offers world wide consultancy on the development and -- perhaps more importantly --
the rescue of places both indoor and outdoor.
He lives, works and gardens in the land of his boyhood -- Wales, UK -- with his wife and children.
His projects have won several awards, including a Prince of Wales award. He also continues to lecture
and lead consensus design workshops for a surprising variety of people around the world.
To learn more about Christopher
Day and his community building projects, please visit www.webcom.com/penina/spirit-and-place
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