«I think 45-minute naps are a rhythm that’s pretty good and works with your sleeping cycles. Istanbul Design Biennial 2014: German architect Jürgen Mayer H has created a room filled with glowing pink light and ambient pink noise to explore how sleeping patterns could become «more nomadic» in the future. Mayer H says he would be keen to introduce a sleeping room in his studio. But the pink noise is the one that somehow relates the best to sleep,» said Mayer H, whose latest research has been centred around the architecture of sleep. At first you think it’s really annoying, but then you lie down for a little bit and your body and brain get into it, and it really works.»
Light bulbs hang from the ceiling, intermittently turning on and off to change to subtly change the pink glow in the room, while a cushion-covered ramp in the centre provides a place to lie down. «If white noise blocks out all environmental sounds, then pink noise is the one that is closest to natural sounds, like rain, or leaves in the wind,» he explained. The architect, whose studio J Mayer H und Partner Architekten is based in Berlin, designed the Nap Gap room as a place where visitors to the Istanbul Design Biennial 2014 can enjoy a short snooze between exhibits. Ten minutes is also very good, but everything between 45 and 90 minutes is very difficult, because you’re in deep rem zones and you don’t known where you are, and that makes it more difficult to come back.»
Concept diagramNap Room is on show at the Galata Greek Primary School for the Istanbul Design Biennial 2014, which bears the title The Future Is Not What It Used To Be. «The concept is that we break out of these solid patterns of sleep and work, and work is more nomadic and life is more nomadic, so we need to redefine the sleep cycle and the sleep moments,» Mayer H told Dezeen at the exhibition opening. The walls are lined with wallpaper that has been decorated with X-shaped motifs, derived from data protection patterns. X-ing out the environmental sound,» said the architect. However the power per hertz decreases as the frequency increases, creating a full-octave sound that masks low-frequency background noise. Like white noise, pink noise contain all the frequencies that are audible to humans. «It’s about really finding these moments of momentary retreat, and then you’re back in life.»
Mayer H’s installation is designed especially for napping. «There is a whole science now of different noises – there’s white noise, brown noise, orange noise – and they’re all different frequencies.
