Music to my ears

With Norway’s aging population set to double by 2040, the need for innovative healthcare solutions has never been greater. Addressing this, our project in Lade integrates music as a tool for care, therapy, and leisure, fostering a vibrant, multi-generational community. Through music, we envision a transformation of nursing homes into dynamic social hubs, benefiting mental health and wellbeing. This music-focused ecosystem resonates with Lade's cultural values at the scale of the new neighbourhood that radically reuses the existing hospital housing, transforming them into generous affordable and generational homes. The landscape is preserved and enhanced with sound-paths and viewpoints giving it access while curating outdoors for food production and nature sanctuaries for wild-life.

Aging is the new normal, with its opportunities and challenges, such as isolation and cognitive decline, highlighting the importance of social contact and community support. Our professional systems show cracks. The welfare state is overstretched. Civil society needs to step in and to reinvent itself as compassionate communities. Living, aging and dying is everybody’s responsibility. We suggest a built environment that facilitates this idea.

In a 2016 study in the UK, music therapy reduced agitation in dementia patients by 67% and 96% of cancer patients found music therapy beneficial. A Finnish study showed a 57% improvement in stroke patients’ mood after regular music therapy. Music therapy sessions in a German study led to a 37% decrease in depression symptoms in elderly people. Despite promising results, further research is needed to comprehend music therapy’s long-term impact on cognitive functions.
Our vision is to use music as a total phenomenon binding elements of care, nature, community, culture, therapy, and leisure. In this new context, Lade will pioneer a project that not only meets the health needs of our aging population but also cultivates an environment of lively community interaction in a landscape that is preserved and enhanced.

The implementation is crucial and our music-based approach will play a central role from day one to stimulate and engage residents. Just like “it takes a village to raise a child”, we want to work in dialogue with specialized professionals including music therapists, psychologists specializing in aging, and researchers focused on wellbeing and social sustainability in our network. We want to engage in innovative participatory processes to implement a new way to design nursing homes and integrate them to our everyday life and neighborhood, weaving music into the fabric of life at Lade. We envision creating a Soundscape Institute on the site to link music research, therapy and social organizations at Lade, using Ringve music museum, NTNU, and Trondheim vibrant music scene in the process. Spaces for concerts, private listening, and spontaneous music encounters enrich everyday experiences. We imagine indoor and outdoor music-making areas with diverse instruments and innovative installations. For instance, exercise equipment that makes music, or John Cage inspired wind harps harmonizing with the landscape.

The goal? To cultivate a diverse, musically engaged community resonating with Lade’s cultural values, enhancing the sensible landscape and including multiple generations.

Building and phasing

The placement of the Nursing home is unlocking the green area´s potential. It preserves Lade, connects to other larger programs and gives walkable access to Kanonhaugen. The higher part of the nursing home is scaled down along the higher terrain, while the other part blends in the green structure. The road becomes an attractive drivable and safe plaza for all with active ground floor. Underground parking is shared with kindergarden, new assisted-living & visitors.
Central to our proposal is the transformative adaptation of the former hospital employee housing, thus limiting the need for new construction and implement new pilote program such as Opptre by SINTEF scaling-up from small house to neighborhood.
New potential phases may remain a brownfield growing over time into a lush and sunny heart of the community.

Adapted mobility

An important part of the project is to create better walkable and cyclable routes, while improving access to public transports. We create two intersecting loops that connects all the important part of the project carefully. We walk along the area we wish to preserve and connect in a way that respects the animals path into Kanonhaugen. We use the nursing home as a landscape footbridge to give an access onto kanonhaugen and connect back to the school and kindergarden. We provide for the residents a safe controlled access to the marka using the topography strategically and part of a inside-outside walkable loop. New bus stops improves access to health facilities and the housing area. The road between the towers is part of a new mobility plan, which includes upgrading one existing tower in the first phase.

 

Enhancing Green network

A core principle of our proposal is the preservation and enhancement of the existing green spaces. The development maintain these spaces, ensuring that they continue to provide recreational and productive areas for residents, thereby improving the quality of life, offering a balance between urban living and the tranquility of nature. New, generous front gardens promote self-management of outdoor spaces, encourage local food production, and cultivate a sense of belonging. A food-coop with allotement gardens based on example like Lystgården in Bergen along the Health axis serves as community base for learning, meeting and sharing. In the implementation phase, we wish to explore further what can be the best use of what is today the dog park, now that it is planned a good and safe access to it from multiple sides.

Soundscape thread and sound-bus!

Our project uses a music ecosystem divided into Education, Production, Performance & Care. It features a music center, a volunteer-based music cafe, an artist-recording studio in the unused school, a music pavilion, and an open-air stage. These are enhanced by outdoor features including wind-harps, music for reindeer, amplifiers, and accessible paths and bridges giving the site better access (UU) with view-points, for a multi-sensory experience, new narrative, provoke thought and imagination.
Lastly, a sound-bus connects the nursing home to other community facilities. This enhances visits and the daily commute for Lade residents, bridging the divide between the site and the wider city. The sound-bus also serves as a lively social catalyst, similar to Bybanen’s melodic station that plays a Grieg melody.

Nursing home

The nursing home integrates music therapy into daily life for cognitive and physiological benefits. It encompasses a recording room for creative self-expression, a sensory room for immersive experiences, and an on-site concert hall for performances.
The architectural design prioritizes resident dignity and autonomy, with features designed for safety and familiarity. A quiet atrium complements the long-term units, and an inside-outside loop connects the larger atrium to a walk that brings the residents safely outside in the ´marka´. The facility fosters social connectivity, creating a vibrant network of intergenerational exchanges. Partnerships with local kindergartens, psychiatric hospitals, and the Ringve Music Museum bridge the gap between residents and the wider community. The main atrium is a generous living room bringing nature and daylight for all the residents all year round. It is facing a plaza that is activated with some units gardens, the volunteer´s base cafe and the day center of the nursing home that is open to others residents of Lade. The music center operates daily an innovative form of activity center able to hosts a diversity of activities as well as state-of-the-arts performances (yoga, sewing, mass, dance, theater workshop, bingo, IT course). The nursing home serves as a cultural and social hub for all while catering for the needs of dependent patients. This invites community engagement and provides residents with a rich cultural life, making the nursing home a central point for cultural and musical exchange.

The project comprises various sections: Building Operations (BO) of 600m2 (plus 170m2 basement for technical requirements), an Administration ward (ADMIN) of 540m2, an Activity and Culture Center (ACC) of 1650m2 housing an atrium, a day center, volunteer base, and a music center, and a Nursing Home Department (NHD) of 4100m2 featuring 64 rooms in 10 residential units. Totaling to 6890m2. Accommodating parking for 70 cars, the basement spans 1400m2.

Housing masterplan

The Masterplan radically reuses the existing houses on site, to fit 50 units and upgrade their energy performace with TEK17 standards. The field-like character of the plan is maintained in new phases (12+18). It gives more importance to the landscape and qualities of a loose and organic connections. Parking is organised in the basement of new construction and as a landscape on-grade. We preserve and enhance the peacefulness of a ´tun´ connected by fields of wild grasses, shared gardens, steps, ramps and paths that gives the area its uniqueness in the context of Trondheim. New shared spaces are created to offer generous bright interior gardens during winter and rainy days, in the forms integrated greenhouse, or glazed terraces extending the volumes. Lofts are raised for more usable sqm.

Implementation

We imagine the first part of the implementation in three steps.
1. Lade community: Organising a mini-music festival showcasing the ambition and new network of people.
2. Nursing home: Develop the sketch into a pre-project including users, and music theraphy with a serie of workshops.
3. Housing: Evaluate the cost of refurbishing and the rent-controlled income to create the basis for an implementation strategy that Trondheim can afford and can include new services.

References

1.https://tidsskriftet.no/2005/06/tema-sykehjemsmedisin/bruk-av-musikk-som-terapeutisk-hjelpemiddel-i-sykehjem
2.https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/handle/11250/3078835
3.Eurostat
4.Bo Hele livet, SINTEF
5.https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12904-018-0286-4
6.World Health Organization. People-centered health care: a policy framework 2007. Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO); 2007.
7.Special Eurobarometer 378 “Active ageing”, EUROSTAT
8.https://gamut.w.uib.no/
9. https://gamut.w.uib.no/kunnskapsbeskrivelser/musikkterapi-og-eldrehelse/?fbclid=IwAR3tEltXPd_N8iLj4oW9PD3rV2eBFHdW4EUrPzQMtU9N7MP5ReJY-5nWE3E
10. Archie, P., Bruera, E. & Cohen, L. (2013). Music-based interventions in palliative cancer care: a review of quantitative studies and neurobiological literature. Support Care Cancer, 21(9), s. 2609–24
11. Stige, B. & Ridder, H. M. (2016). Fagutvikling i praksis. I: B. Stige & H. M. O. Ridder (Red.). Musikkterapi og eldrehelse (s. 234-238).