The Baylight Foundation

From 2018 – 2023, the four houses at Walmer Yard were the focus of the Baylight Foundation, a registered charity, with the aim of increasing the public understanding of what architecture can do, rooted in the experience of Walmer Yard.

The four houses and courtyard engage our sense of touch, smell, sight and sound. They also encourage sharing. It is these experiences which the Foundation demonstrated, documented and explored, through three threads:

Previously appreciation of these experiences has been poetic and literary. The Yard mapped a more empirical understanding, using tools from the fields of neuroscience, psychology and anthropology.

The Foundation considered how such analogue and traditional experiences of architecture stand in an increasingly digital future of virtual and enhanced reality, where the hearth is replaced by the mobile phone.

Research at Walmer Yard investigated the way in which we can be grounded, connected and made ‘at home’ by means of such architectural experience.

At the core of the Foundation was the sharing of the experience of visiting and staying, and the rituals of daily domestic life.