This project proposes a sound healing centre located in St. James Garden, a sunken cemetery beneath Liverpool Cathedral. Once a quarry, then a graveyard, the site now holds layers of stillness, memory, and sound. Its vertical acoustic condition—church bells above, city murmurs at mid-level, and silence at the base—became the conceptual foundation for an architecture that listens as much as it speaks.
The design draws inspiration from the structure of a fugue—a musical form where voices enter independently, overlap, and evolve. This becomes a metaphor for Liverpool’s layered musical cultures: from Caribbean gospel and reggae in Windsor Street, to Cantonese opera and tea rituals in Nelson Street, to Irish folk memories from Duke Street. These are not mainstream performances, but lived, local, and often overlooked sonic traditions.
The architecture responds through a series of interconnected spaces: a tea house for intimate listening, a recording and editing studio, a community sound archive, and a bar that replays recorded voices and stories. At the heart stands the Resonance Tower, a vertical space for echo, light, and contemplation. Materials such as gabion stone walls, reclaimed brick, and timber create warmth and texture, grounding the building in the language of collective memory.
This is not just a building for sound, but a space where sound becomes care. A place where communities are not represented by others, but represent themselves—through their voices, their rhythms, and their silence. This kind of bottom-up form of creating sounds gives them the initiative over the sounds.
Gallery
Click to enlarge
