[00:00:00] Introduction to Urban Soundscapes
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[00:00:00] Sola DaSilva: You think you know the sounds of the city, but have you heard it like this?

[00:00:07] Beyond the familiar hustle and bustle, there is an unexpected wilderness that thrives within the urban landscape.

[00:00:34] Sound architect Nicola Sowers and I take a sound walk along the LA River to uncover these hidden soundscapes.

[00:00:47] We are surrounded by a world of sound that is rich and diverse. And sometimes we tune it out because it's, it can be a lot. It's, it can be overstimulating. In this episode, we discuss how sound can be introduced into spaces in a way that is intentional, that can bring healing, that can also provide support to people who have different abilities, people who are aging, uh, people who have different needs. Sound is often overlooked in architecture and treated as something to be blocked rather than molded or shaped in some form that can give us immersive experiences that are enriching and uplifting.

[00:01:37] Before we jump in, my name is Sola Da Silva. I'm an architect and storyteller, and I am your host. Welcome to Third Space.


[00:01:48] Meet the Sound Architect: Nicholas Sowers
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[00:01:48] Sola DaSilva: My guest today is Nicholas Sowers. He's the principal and founder of Timbre Architecture and Sound. He has launched an architecture firm in Seattle to address the sonic environment and help clients and stakeholders build healthier and more inclusive spaces.

[00:02:06] His fascination with sound emerged from the experience of listening to recordings from his travels all over the world, including Istanbul and Morocco. It was such a treat to record this episode with Nick. He has so many anecdotes, as you'll see, and he brings a wealth of knowledge and passion to sound architecture.

[00:02:26] So I hope you enjoy this episode. Okay,

[00:02:32] I'd like to invite you to a challenge. Pause the recording right now and step outside for a walk. Bring out your phone and take a quick recording of your environment. What does it sound like? Um, it could be 15 seconds, it could be 20 seconds, and post it in the comments or send me an email. I'd love to hear your soundscapes.


[00:02:55] Exploring the LA River Soundscape
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[00:02:55] Nicolas Sowers: Okay, so we can see up there there's some rocks and actually that, that potentially could give us a way in. Also, I did see a sign that said please keep to the rocky parts of the river because the vegetation is protected and sensitive. Just yeah, that could be our entry there.

[00:03:17] Sola DaSilva: So we were talking about how we feel sound, as well as listen to it.

[00:03:23] Nicolas Sowers: Right.

[00:03:24] Sola DaSilva: Yeah.


[00:03:25] The Science of Sound and Human Perception
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[00:03:25] Nicolas Sowers: There's, you know, the human ear picks up frequencies in the range of 20 hertz to 20, 000 hertz, approximately. And that's what the ear can receive, but our bodies can receive infrasound, which is vibration below 20 hertz. Whenever you're at a concert, standing maybe too close to the speakers, and you feel your organs bouncing around, that's, you're getting infrasound, as well as probably damaging your eardrums, but, I think there's also, I mean, we're, so we're walking next to the L. A. River, and the river's not really deep enough to swim in, but I do think that water and listening is, Water creates these moments for connecting to nature. And one of the things I found that is pretty amazing is being underwater and how that soundscape changes so dramatically because now our ears, which are used to picking up sounds through the air, don't really work anymore.

[00:04:34] And the way that we listen under water is through bone conduction, and that's the, that's pressure waves in the water hitting bones in your jaw, bones around your, you know, bones near your inner ear, and that, those vibrations are then conducted into the aural, aural cortex for processing, so it bypasses a lot of the, the hairs, the little ways that the inner ear picks up sound from air.

[00:05:07] It's kind of neat that we have still programmed in us, you know, a pretty ancient way of absorbing sound. So yeah, the whole body is an ear.

[00:05:20] Sola DaSilva: The whole body is a listening organ.


[00:05:23] Hydrophone Adventures and Underwater Sounds
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[00:05:23] Nicolas Sowers: But we brought on this walk to the LA River a hydrophone, which is something I, um, I'm really happy that you suggested that I bring it, got it out of my box of microphones.

[00:05:36] Because it had been a while since I went sound fishing. Um, I used to live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I would, many watery edges there, I would take a hydrophone and dip it into the bay. And it's, it's so magical how hearing this, just normal sounds of a city, and then you drop that microphone in, and you're hearing all, like, say you're over by the docks near the Alameda Ferry landing, and you hear creaks and other things going on underwater.

[00:06:09] Um, I was told that there was a dolphin pod that lived around this particular dock, but I could never figure out whether I was hearing some of the dolphin sounds or, yeah, we can go down there, or it was just the wood and the piles and some maybe ropes or something rubbing against it. But I love that challenge to imagine what you're hearing without seeing it.

[00:06:34] Sola DaSilva: Yeah.

[00:06:36] Nicolas Sowers: Oh, careful of the Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:38] Sola DaSilva: Okay, we're gonna try not to fall.

[00:06:40] Nicolas Sowers: Yeah. So we can get over to this river and drop the hydrophone in there and see what we get.

[00:06:48] Sola DaSilva: Yep. Excited.


[00:06:53] The History and Transformation of the LA River
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[00:06:53] Nicolas Sowers: This is the part of the L. A. River called the Glendale Narrows. Um, it's, uh, most of the L. A. River is, uh, completely, uh, concrete channel, uh, channelized concrete.

[00:07:07] Sola DaSilva: Yeah. Why is that?

[00:07:08] Nicolas Sowers: It's a great question. Um, since the, really since Westerners started occupying this area, they were, to make use of the water from the LA rivers, of course, for the settlement, but it was unpredictable.

[00:07:25] It's a riparian watershed, meaning that it's subject to floods and the path of the river changed. It jumped around in certain areas. Yeah. So, uh, there were floods that would damage the infrastructure and also destroy homes and other, when it really, when it shifted paths, it created a lot of destruction.

[00:07:46] And as the city became more and more built up and urbanized, the areas for water, the ability of the river to kind of be flexible diminished to the point where it would create these, potentially very hazardous flash floods, and in the 1930s, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers channelized it. But, this part of the Glendale Narrows, the water table's too high, so they couldn't put concrete on the bottom. So we're standing on sand here, which is also nice, because it's, I don't know, we'll find out if this worked in the recording, but did the sound levels noticeably drop and become kind of I mean, I immediately already feel calmer here or or standing under this tree with listening to the leaves in the wind for just moments ago, we were on this concrete path against chain link fence.

[00:08:41] So the river bottom is allowed to retain its natural, I mean, I wouldn't call this exactly natural, but it's more natural and it's quite lovely. It's like this other world that a lot of Angelenos, I don't think they know about it, too many know about it still. Um, a friend of mine, Geoff Manaugh, writes Building Blog. He would always kind of joke that the friends of the L. A. River are, well, we love them and we, like, they're doing a great job at improving the condition of the river. He's like, I don't want them to be too successful because then the river won't have this these like kind of cool raw edges Yeah, there's something amazing about the part further I mean, this is amazing and then further down where it's just all concrete. It's kind of a crazy landscape, a crazy slice through the city you know, we're kind of occupying an edge in a way, although it's really, it's an edge to that neighborhood. It's an edge to that neighborhood.


[00:09:43] Sound in Architecture: Designing with Intent
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[00:09:43] Nicolas Sowers: And it's something I always seek to do when I go on sound walks. It's like, get me to the edge of something. That's where I want to be, right. I, and I think there are a lot of, it offers opportunities for groups who may not find their identity in a certain place that's given to them.

[00:10:01] And a great example of this, I've been having these conversations with other architects about libraries. And one thing that's come up in some of these conversations is how teenagers, they don't want to use like a big multi purpose room that is designated for them, like teen room, come in here. They want to find the edges of a space, a little niche someplace and I think this has so much to do with sound just a place where you can feel like your voice isn't gonna project out all over, you can kind of have a little conversation with a friend and I doubt that they're thinking about that but they're but they there's something in our bodies that know hey, I don't feel comfortable out in this open spot I want to find I want to find a little nook to come into and be kind of sheltered. Yeah, there's a lot of examples.

[00:10:56] I mean, thresholds is another, it's, uh, architects, I think, spend a good amount of time thinking about the entrance to something, the experience you want to have. And if you go on, if you go on a sound walk, like we're on now, but one maybe that has more of like, okay, now we're going to enter this building and you would it feels that's just like huge change in the soundscape as you, when you go from an outside to an inside space, or when you go, say, into, um, a sacred space, like a cathedral, you know, then now you're getting these re reverb times. This there's, your footsteps are all sent being sent up and scattered around a building. So the, design, like that experience of going from one moment when you're maybe just part of a mass to then all of a sudden you're now this individual kind of creating an echo and a space. That's a tremendous psychological change.

[00:12:00] Sola DaSilva: It's kind of wild out here, too. I like that, right?

[00:12:03] Nicolas Sowers: Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah, uh, we see there's like an egret over there.

[00:12:09] Yeah. Looking for some lunch in the river. And all the whatever's just growing in the sand here. Certainly some evidence of people as well. Yeah. But not too bad. It's actually fairly clean. I mean, it's also good. We're down here to talk about sound. And I feel like there's something wild about sound.

[00:12:30] There's like a wilderness to it that's partly to do with, we don't see it. It's this invisible, un, kind of, like a force, right, that affects us, that we don't see, um, that maybe is hard to manage and, and rein in. That might be part of why I'm drawn to it too. I like it as this, like a little bit of a wild force in our world. Though I, my whole thing is, of course, we can do a lot more to control it and design it and think about it. We don't have to let it rule us.


[00:13:04] Innovative Sound Projects and Their Impact
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[00:13:04] Sola DaSilva: There's so much we can do to include sound in positive ways, and I was looking at that example of the project that you did, where you go down a hallway, and then you have a different sound, and you go down a different hallway, and you have a different sound, and that's kind of like, that point you made about taking control of it. And it's not that, I mean, I don't even know if taking control of it is, is the word, but more like kind of dancing with it.

[00:13:27] Nicolas Sowers: I like that. Sure. Yes. Um, so the, the way that architects have been trained to think about sound in our building science course, it's this, you know, these pressure waves that to calculate, we have, there's means for absorbing them, there's documented assemblies for isolating them. We can, we can manage it in those ways, and as architects, we learn about those, but then we probably just think, Oh, we'll have the acoustic engineer do that part of the project for us, and then we don't have to think about sound anymore, and

[00:14:07] Sola DaSilva: Tell me the assembly.

[00:14:08] Nicolas Sowers: Right.

[00:14:08] Sola DaSilva: Two, two layers of gyp.

[00:14:10] Nicolas Sowers: And we design our buildings in silence, when you think about it, like the renderings, even the, even when a really cool walkthrough video is done of a project, and you just put some like lo fi beats to it and it's like, oh, this is cool. And it's like, it's so like, yeah, okay. It's good. It gives you a sense of moving through a space and what are the transitions like. But oh my goodness, like how much is missed by not auralizing some of that. Now people will argue, oh, I don't have budget for like have acoustic consultant to an auralization and sure, right, there's a, I think there's many projects that just can't afford they're not even if someone is mindful of it, right? You know, there's so many things that architects have to think about so i'm i'm an architect. I I get it. Um part of what I was getting at though, and you you bring up this project it's an office I did for a graphic design and branding company in San Francisco who the client who was already like pretty I think pretty obsessed about sound because he was Um, he came to me and said I love Iannis Xenakis, who's a avant garde architect, sound composer, you know, one of the pioneers of electronic music.

[00:15:27] His music is intense, to say the least. So I was like, wow, we're going to make a space that just plays Xenakis. That's cool. That's amazing. And then he said, I don't want to see any speakers. I want this to be invisible. And that's where I was really like, okay, now I've got actually something that it's not just about a one off of some, uh, uh, experimental, um, electronic music showcase project. This is actually an idea to develop projects that where you don't see the sound, and then it just occurred to me where you don't see the sources of the sound, right? Cause I don't like ceiling speakers. I kind of, I, I, I really don't like, I don't like can lights either for a similar, you're just kind of just washed on.

[00:16:17] But ceiling speakers to me evokes like music of, of like retail environments, right? You're just being washed with this, you know, like perfume, um, audio perfume. Uh, so I was also keen to figure this out and there's a technology called transducers, which will, it's a product meant to attach to other surfaces. Uh, it's a, it's a speaker and a coil. Uh, it's the, I should say, it's the magnet and coil element of a speaker cone, but without the cone, right? So then you can attach that to anything. And we put them on the back of the sheetrock walls. We experimented with using them on, um, on the housing for lights. Um, we put them in random places.

[00:17:04] We were also masking sounds in the bathroom. So he wanted loons. That's a wild, it's an amazing sound. They're an amazing bird. Um, so, you know, whatever masking quality bird sounds have, but it's more about, so it was, he came to me and had this idea to create some of these sound experiences and then I kept going with it. I said, well, what about this fire corridor? You know, why not create a place for your workers to come out and just go on a little, have a break, you know, have a, a space that's not like designated. Okay, here's your quiet room or here's a sound bath. It wasn't like it was just, it was just a space with sounds from, um, my collaborator, Bryan Finoki and I, we recorded some sounds of, um, um, boats and ropes and things around the San Francisco piers, uh, we took those sounds and Bryan made this amazing track, um, that plays in the corridor, uh, through this four channel setup.

[00:18:06] So you kind of, as you move through it, the sounds change. It's not just, uh, you know, all the sounds playing at once. Um, it's a really a sound experience. And, um, for us, that's the, those added things. That's not something that an acoustic engineer is bringing to a project, and they can certainly help with it, right?

[00:18:27] But the ideation of these sound experiences, um, has to be at the beginning of a project. And I was lucky to have this client who already had those ideas, so I didn't have to sell these sorts of things.

[00:18:43] Sola DaSilva: I can see that like applied to different spaces, you know, like, I don't know, hospital setting, you know, uh, I mean, we already know, like when you go to a spa, those are the typical places where they have all this calming music and that's kind of expected, but at schools, even, even libraries, you just mentioned, there could be some cool spaces in a library that has sound experiences, right?

[00:19:06] Nicolas Sowers: I think so. I think it would add to, it would, it would help in a lot of ways. So.


[00:19:12] Soundscapes for Accessibility and Inclusion
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[00:19:12] Nicolas Sowers: Um, a friend of mine, he's an artist who does, he makes wind chimes and fountains, and he's also a sound artist and has done installations. Um, Chris Kallmyer, he just did this project for a blind potter, um, for his house. He created these fountains and these moments in the house that help this blind person kind of know where they are, right?

[00:19:39] They always know where they are with these sonic markers. Uh, he even gave an example, like, if his client was dropped off by a rideshare, you know, and for some time didn't know actually where his house was, right? And as the rideshare drove off, he didn't have anyone to assist finding his house, you know, but now that there's a fountain in front of his house, I think that was the impetus for it, like, let me give you a marker to draw into.

[00:20:03] So I wonder, in spaces like those, Sure, like people who are, um, you know, visually impaired, you know, have, um, or blind, right? What one amazing thing about that is that the visual cortex has been scientifically shown to be utilized by people who are blind, who have been blind from birth. Use the visual cortex in sensing space.

[00:20:32] When, when they're receiving sound. You know, when we receive sound with, that's, you know, the great thing of having two ears is that it helps with this localization. Your head creates a shadow and therefore a sound coming from the left is shaded and your right ear, of course, won't hear it as loud. So the brain processes that.

[00:20:50] It also processes the phase difference. So where the wavelength is, when it hits one ear, that wave changes. It's kind of at a different point in its inflection and then the pressure level as it comes to the other ear and our brain has this amazing capability to make that process that and localize sounds.

[00:21:12] And it was shown that the visual cortex is assisting in some of the mapping of a space, right? It's kind of like, you know, where is, like, where is that sound in three dimensions? Yeah. Yeah. It just blew my mind. Of course, the senses are all connected. As we're talking about sound and when I'm designing, I'm thinking about what it looks like matters so much too, you know, it all needs to work together.

[00:21:34] Sola DaSilva: Yeah, and I can think of so many use cases, just even for people who are aging in place and how sound can be part of their homes and how sound can be like reminders or just different things. Like there's so like,

[00:21:48] Nicolas Sowers: yes, it is. Oh, it's,

[00:21:51] Sola DaSilva: Oh my God. It's exciting.

[00:21:52] Nicolas Sowers: It is so exciting.


[00:21:54] The Future of Sound in Design
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[00:21:54] Nicolas Sowers: Sound is the future of, of there's so much ground to be made up and there are, as you're, so you mentioned like an aging population, right?

[00:22:03] That, you know, people start to lose their hearing, right? So being sensitive to that and maybe understanding the frequency ranges that are, that as that diminishes, but to give people who might be losing their hearing still a strong connection to their environment through sound and vibration. Okay, I want to tell a little story, um, cause you also, you kind of, you know, we're talking about people with disabilities, people with different hearing capabilities.

[00:22:29] So I, um, when I, uh, I had a workshop in Oakland for some time and I was building this quiet room in there and I had the prototype ready to go. And I was bringing some clients in to talk about a recording studio that I was designing for them. And I was going to design for them. And they, they brought their niece along, um, and I was like, oh, is it okay if, if my niece comes in and hangs out in the studio with us?

[00:22:58] Sure. And their niece is an autistic person who is non verbal. And I was like, this, I hope, like I wasn't really prepared for that. I don't, but I'm like, okay. Great. I have some, I have kind of the, she can go hang out in the quiet room cause I had this foam floor with this like faux fur on it. So it's this like very like text, like delicious texture, right?

[00:23:21] So she goes in there and lies down. I think she's like maybe 16 or something, right? Teenager. Lying down on the floor and then I had these sounds playing that I had recorded, uh, Vibration mix of kind of reverb actually just recorded in the warehouse, just various. Sounds of machines going and nothing terribly musical, nothing terribly offensive either.

[00:23:45] So that was vibrating in the floor through the transducers, through this foam squishy floor. And she lies down on there and just starts It sounded like yelps, like is someone having a really good time or are they in pain? And I'm like, I quickly go, I'm like, is this okay? They're like, she is loving that.

[00:24:01] You have to keep going. In fact, Can you play some Michael Jackson? I think that was like her favorite music or something. So I, you know, I put that on and for the, I mean, she could have stayed there all day. So I, I was just, my mind was opened up. I hadn't really thought about benefits that, that, that kind of thinking that I do and the kind of vibrational architecture that I make could be really help people right could really help people who are just looking for a sense. I think in her case it was almost like is it a sensory overload, but actually some for some Autistic people that they look for that kind of over over what we might think is over stimulation is actually good for some groups, but then other groups don't it's too much, right?

[00:24:50] So you really have to you have to be working with someone who is trained and knows what they're doing. In this case I just I trusted my clients. It was their niece. That's something I'm very excited about Is I would love to collaborate with people who are in that space and how can architecture serve that?

[00:25:06] That's that's definitely something for people with disabilities and then for people who are hard of hearing as well I think vibrational architecture could be giving the feeling of sound that feeling of touch as we're when we got started here we're talking about sound as touch at a distance that you can actually have touch at no distance, right?

[00:25:27] That's sound that you're hearing with your body. Yeah, I'm really excited about that.

[00:25:32] I think the mosquito just got my ankle Let's not forget we're in this like in a riverbed here. Do you want it to get the hydrophone into the water? Yes, let's do that. Let's do that. Okay. Okay. Alright, here we go.

[00:25:53] There's this invisible world underneath this, in this river that you're listening to right now.

[00:26:02] You know, there's something else I wanted to say, which is, I think we seek nature sound for sure. Because, it's, you know, we evolved to hear in nature. We didn't evolve to hear inside of rooms and offices, right? In that sense, it's so unnatural. So we might seek to create a kind of little experience of nature through listening to something soothing on, on headphones, um, something to kind of take us away from the harshness.

[00:26:34] So just the, the undesirable soundscape that may exist in, you know, cities or in our buildings. Um, but anyone, anyone who listens to those also knows there's no, there's no exchanging that experience for actually being out here. But there's something to do with feeling very connected when you listen. You know, I think it's more about, can you go for a walk?

[00:27:01] And not be judgmental about what you're hearing. Can you, is there a way to just take in the sounds and appreciate and just see what you notice? Almost like a meditation practice, really. And internalizing those sounds is really opportunities to connect to the world around you, to connect to people that you might be on the sound walk with, or perhaps it's your neighbors, someone, someone in your community that you are making these connections by hearing something at the same time.

[00:27:32] I think when we were first talking, right, bird song was like something that you wanted to talk about. And I was thinking my memories of actually being in Panama, the traveling there and how the, I mean the birds, there's a lot of birds, a lot of tropical birds that when you listen to the dawn chorus, the, you know, the birds greeting the sun and, you know, you're traveling somewhere different.

[00:28:00] That dawn chorus is so, it's like one of those strongest, it's a beautiful thing to wake up to as well, because it's just the strong reminder that you're in a new place, right? You don't, you know, this is not the bird song that you're used to when you wake up at home. Right. So I just think that there's a real power to connecting you to a place that listening, listening provides that.

[00:28:28] I find myself often actually just pressing record on a soundwalk and I may never listen to that. I may never listen to that. I love those birds. I may never listen to the sound recording again. It's kind of like, it seems silly to just, you know, like take, uh, Why record sound if you're not actually going to listen to it?

[00:28:54] I don't know if I will or not, but the point is, when I hit record, I feel like there's like a switch that also happens in me. Like, now I'm really trying to dissect the layers and just be aware. Be really sensitive to, you know, how far away is that sound that I'm taking in? Or, why do I hear this hum and where might that be coming from?

[00:29:17] Yeah, I feel like it just gives you this really amazing connection to the place that you're in when you're listening.

[00:29:23] Sola DaSilva: I like that you said, um, non judgmental listening, because I think oftentimes we judge the sounds that we hear, right? I think just that openness, um, is, is important because I think when we try to just over control our environment, that's how we get to where we are now, right? Where we overdo it in a way, because we want to sterilize it almost. It's almost like a sterilization, right? Right.

[00:29:54] Nicolas Sowers: Yes, or there's a an impetus to kind of categorize what we see and experience and certainly capitalism, you know, wants that kind of, even, I mean, this is a tricky subject, but even just the areas like trauma, you know, things, things that have been, that we feel, and trauma that an environment has experienced, trauma that a group of people have endured, or that a person has endured.

[00:30:23] I think there's a tendency even in that space, even the kind of in a wellness, in a well meaning manner to like, well, let's heal the trauma, but by naming and categorizing and saying this does, you know, I, um, yeah, I feel like there's a danger in certainly and just monetizing that, you know, Oh, you need to, you If you want to heal from there, you must, you know, go to this sound bath or something.

[00:30:51] And we walked past, it's funny, we walked past such a place on our walk, just so happened to be a sound bath therapy place. And that can be great for people, right? I'm not hating on those things. I just think that there's a possibility to, Just open yourself up in, in a way, in a manner that's just also free.

[00:31:14] It's just find yourself in a place that works, a sanctuary that works for you. Um, hopefully, you know, access to parks. That's something else that's kind of important in my work and desire is to understand how the soundscape of, of parks. And. Seattle, where I live, we have a lot of noise. We have the airport.

[00:31:38] We have, you know, just, uh, communities of color, which have just, you know, You know, historically been basically left to be the place where we can cut a freeway through, right? And it's, and they're noisy. And furthermore, we haven't developed a good enough park infrastructure. So where do people go to kind of find some peace and quiet to heal, to just not think about things, right?

[00:32:04] Give me a place where I don't have to

[00:32:07] Sola DaSilva: Yep.

[00:32:08] Nicolas Sowers: Where I don't have to be productive. That's another issue too I have with

[00:32:12] Sola DaSilva: productivity,

[00:32:13] Nicolas Sowers: productivity, like, Oh, we need to improve the sound so that people are more productive. Well, how about just taking care of people too? You know, I mean, it all, it'll work together, but yeah, I think that it goes back to,

[00:32:34] well, the whole, the whole question of what can we do as architects and designers to, to make To help because we do have a big role in shaping these environments and we, we are no strangers to finding inspiration in nature. We're always, we're often doing that to create things. So let me take this pattern from nature or let's study, you know, let's study how algae grows and come up with some solution.

[00:33:01] Maybe it's a material application or other ways that we look to nature for solutions. There's a real, um, movement as well to introduce nature sounds and biophilic sounds, right? Something that, um, is probably a whole other subject of, uh, how to do that right. How to do that in a manner that that isn't annoying, like just bird tweets and things. I mean, we talked about the loons in the bathroom. I didn't get to interview anyone else in the office who, who had to experience that, that I think you have to be careful about, um, the sounds that you introduce, because it has a big impact on people, like what you decide to play for someone can create, you can, when you're working in such a way that it can elicit emotions and reactions and people you have to, um, be prepared for some of those just, uh, an example comes to mind actually is like we've all worked in open offices at some point and I used to work with the guy who just wanted silence and I am a person I'm needing like the buzz of a cafe and noise and music, right?

[00:34:24] And so we'd have these battles over the stereo. And I, I feel like, I don't know, like, um, in retrospect, could there have been a solution? And I mean, we're trying to fix offices. Many people are working on that too. So, yeah, I'm, I'm being sensitive to sound has helped me with understanding so many aspects of human experience that trans translate way beyond sound, right? It's, yeah.


[00:34:53] Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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[00:34:53] Sola DaSilva: So I ask all my guests this question, Nick, what is your third space? 

[00:34:58] Nicolas Sowers: My third space is a soccer pitch here in South Seattle. I'll show up on a Sunday morning and play with some regulars and whoever else is hanging around the field. Often there's some immigrants from West Africa that I get to practice my terrible French with.

[00:35:22] Uh, whoever is there, you're just there to speak this universal language of soccer.

[00:35:36] Sola DaSilva: Thank you for listening to this episode of Third Space. Be sure to like, subscribe, and share. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Send me emails, DMs. Adios, friends. Until next time.