Overview

That moment you enter a temple and the serenity almost hugs you, making you feel at ease. Some people feel it in a graveyard, others at a spa or in a library surrounded by books. That little moment of escape.

Over time we have lost spaces that provide respite, allow you to go quiet, decompress, reflect and go inwards and maybe even connect with other people, spiritual forces and ancestors. We are bombarded by stimulus, noise, notifications, loud music, crowds, roadworks, announcements, poor acoustic design and so on.

We crave calm.

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Bringing design to life

We each have a deep well of love inside of us that gets harder and harder to reach as we are bombarded by modern day stimulus. That love is ever present, intelligent and powerful with the ability to send ripples of calm and strength throughout communities.

The Calm Space is a physical space, a haven of tranquillity in bustling urban communities, estates, towns or villages that re-create that serene space where you can take a moment, time out, get off the life treadmill and regroup with yourself. It's purpose is to help decompress, reduce stimulation, calm the senses and nervous system.

The Calm Space can also re-energise. A physical space supported by digital technology to offer tools and services to support decompression - secular to spiritual, visual, auditory and sense based so all the senses are able to calm in synch.

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Key Insights

There is extensive research on the state of poor mental health globally and in particular anxiety disorders. 60% of UK adults experienced anxiety that interfered with their daily lives in the past two weeks with little to no respite. Polling of 6000 UK adults (conducted on our behalf by Opinium) found that nearly three-quarters of the population (73%) had felt anxious at least sometimes in the previous two weeks, while more than a quarter (26%) of those with feelings of anxiety felt anxious to the extent that it stopped them from doing what they’d like or need to do. One in five people (20%) felt anxious most or all of the time.

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Noisy caffeine serving cafes are not helping. Neither is the gym, Or the pub. We need a calming third space.

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Inspiration:

The inspiration for this project is drawn from;

• the need to escape the crazy noise of living in a major city - no escape from noisy cafes, public spaces, the hum of the city.

• The increase of neurodivergence rendering neurotypical environments unfit for growing ND population.

• That moment of stepping into a spiritual space that is 'energetically' clean and powerful

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Prototype

Some initial features we would like to explore include but are not limited to:

• Open, inviting and calming interior design
• Multi sensory design - responding to all the senses.
• Physical and digital support, controlled to avoid tech overuse.
• Open meditation pods
• Acoustic affordance - sound absorbing materials
• Platform of support tools such as Headspace, Calm, Pranic Healing, TM, Headway, Nidra Yoga, NSDR etc
• Playing with Neuroscience to engage oxytocin serotonin calming and bonding hormones.

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Next Steps

We plan to trial a mock up of a calm space in a local library to test and iterate how we might help people decompress in a publicly available space. We believe it could be blended with the story bench, connected artefact and empathy hacks poster.

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