Contemplating and gathering

Quiet room

Emergingmeditation room · multifaith space · quiet room · Raum der Stille (German)

hospital airport school and university office housing

A small, sober room for keeping silent, praying, meditating or reflecting, open to people of any faith or none.

Solves

What it solves

It offers a pause protected from noise and from eyes within high-stress places such as hospitals, airports, schools or offices. It also serves for grief, for waiting for news or simply for resting a few minutes.

Today

Place it near circulation routes but out of the way, with good sound insulation, soft daylight and warm materials. Keep the space neutral and store the objects of each tradition in a cabinet to bring them out when used.

Common mistake

Leaving it in a leftover room without ventilation or light, next to a plant room, or filling it with the symbols of a single faith.

Tomorrow

Health and work buildings increasingly include it from the brief, with control of light and sound for each use. In the tropics it can open onto a small courtyard or garden with natural ventilation instead of relying on air conditioning.

Fact A Japanese tea room can measure barely 1.75 tatamis, proof that contemplation needs very little area.

Where it comes from

1Japanese tea room Kyoto, Japan, 1582
The Tai-an room, attributed to Sen no Rikyū, shows the minimal room with a low door (nijiriguchi) that forces one to bow and separates the silence within from the world outside.
2United Nations New York, 1957
Dag Hammarskjöld, the organization’s Secretary-General, planned a meditation room without religious symbols, with a block of iron ore under a single beam of light, dedicated to outer silence and inner stillness.
3Rothko Chapel Houston, United States, 1971
A sanctuary open to all faiths, with fourteen dark paintings and a filtered top light that changes with the clouds.
4Raum der Stille Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, 1994
A neutral room inspired by the one at the United Nations, open to the public for prayer, remembrance and meditation.

Masters

Eero Saarinen MIT Chapel, Cambridge, United States, 1955
He designed a windowless brick cylinder where light comes down from a skylight and rises reflected from a moat of water. It is a space without fixed symbols for praying, listening to music or reflecting.
Tadao Ando UNESCO Meditation Space, Paris, France, 1995
He designed an almost empty concrete cylinder where a strip of light enters between wall and roof. He conceived it so that anyone, regardless of origin or religion, could stop to reflect.

Appears in the routes

Wellbeing and calm step 11 of 12

Sources

Also in Contemplating and gathering

Diagrams and texts by LDB Arquitectura. They are shared under the CC BY 4.0 license, which allows them to be used and adapted with credit to the source.