As cities continue to densify, the opportunity for silence and sensory recovery within the urban environment becomes increasingly urgent. Traditional interior public spaces that historically allowed for quiet, unstructured presence are disappearing, while the constant demand for attention from noise, movement, and digital stimulation continues to grow. This project argues that the contemporary city is missing a typology: a space designed not for program or spectacle, but for the restoration of the body and mind.
Urban Retreat proposes a public sensory recovery space as a timber top-up on the roof of Hotel Krasnapolsky on Dam Square in Amsterdam, the busiest location in the country, and therefore the place where the need is greatest. Six spaces across two routes gradually reintroduce the senses after a period of deliberate stillness, moving from a dark acoustically absorbed decompression room through spaces of increasing sensory complexity toward a rooftop garden open to weather and sky. Timber operates as the primary structural and atmospheric material throughout, informed by evidence-based research into the physiological effects of natural materiality, color, sound, and scent on the human nervous system. The project demonstrates that sensory experience should drive architectural and technical decisions from the outset, and that spaces of sensory recovery deserve to be understood as necessary urban infrastructure. ... Read more