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Shadowing practice: The architecture of aging well

Listen to the line, then say it out loud
Line 1

Full transcript

  1. I like to see what people do.0:00
  2. What do you do for work?0:02
  3. I'm like, I key key with the old gays.0:02
  4. That's what we do.0:04
  5. And some paperwork here and there.0:05
  6. Welcome to The Pride, an affordable senior housing community in Boston, a place for LGBTQ seniors and allies to age safely and in community.0:08
  7. Dun dun dun dun dun dun.0:19
  8. Hello.0:22
  9. Hello.0:23
  10. Picture me with Ellen DeGeneres.0:28
  11. And you can see a window in every room.0:32
  12. It's wonderful.0:34
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  1. By 2040, the U .S.0:36
  2. Census Bureau projects that for the first time in the United States, adults over the age of 65 will outnumber children under 18.0:38
  3. This left me wondering, where will we all live and who is designing those spaces?0:46
  4. There's the stigma on senior living as a place where you go to die.1:02
  5. But the places that we design are not that at all.1:06
  6. The design decisions that architects make dictate what a space can be.1:10
  7. Here are five qualities that make The Pride a cozy, accessible place for aging.1:14
  8. First up, location.1:20
  9. The Pride is in Hyde Park, which is one of the several neighborhoods of Boston.1:22
  10. It is a building that houses 74 units of independent affordable housing.1:28
  11. And at the same time, 8 ,000 square feet of community center that is open to our residents, but also to the city and the community at large.1:32
  12. As principal architect of The Pride, Philippe Saad made use of an existing campus.1:40
  13. The building was a school.1:47
  14. It was built over three decades, from 1902 to 1933.1:50
  15. You have the Hyde Park library right there.1:57
  16. The last building on the left -hand side is the Menino Art Center.2:00
  17. There's also a bowling alley over there and a very historic old ice cream shop.2:03
  18. So residents really have everything within a block walking distance from their homes.2:07
  19. Its location, we couldn't find a site like this that is empty sitting to build a new building.2:14
  20. Also, historic schools have a lot of amenity spaces.2:19
  21. People have access to more amenities than regular affordable housing.2:22
  22. And usually they have very large windows.2:26
  23. Having the natural daylight helps people live better.2:29
  24. Enter what Philippe calls everybody's living room, where the aim is to bring the outdoors inside.2:33
  25. My wife and I moved in a little over a year ago.2:40
  26. I'm the wife in question and I moved in with her.2:42
  27. In the northeast, we live the majority of our days indoors.2:46
  28. We want a space that connects people to the outside.2:50
  29. So we're in the sunroom.2:54
  30. It is so incredibly built for just this feeling of comfort.2:56
  31. With the windows, the fireplace.3:01
  32. People really have the capability to sit inside in the cold weather, but also feel that they're part of the exterior.3:04
  33. And this can be helpful as people age and their mental faculties diminish.3:12
  34. A 2018 study found that being in a space with a lot of natural light, specifically within three meters of a window from 8 to 10 a .m., can reduce3:16
  35. symptoms of depression in people living with dementia.3:25
  36. When it's nicer out, we look out to a garden.3:29
  37. There's residents getting exercise out here.3:33
  38. And I've noticed a lot of people in the studio or one -bedroom apartments come down here and hang out.3:36
  39. They bring a book to read, they bring a newspaper, and they stay for hours.3:41
  40. The ideal is to really have units that if you come in at 62 and you are a fully -abled, body person, you can live till either you pass on3:47
  41. or you decide you want to move out of the building.3:59
  42. We worked to embed dementia -friendly principles throughout the building.4:02
  43. Our eye sees color and contrast.4:07
  44. But as the eye ages and our capability to recognize objects in the space starts to fade away, creating a contrast between two objects become an important cue.4:09
  45. This should always be contrasting between a toilet and its wall and a toilet and its floor.4:21
  46. For stairs, we design the landing different color than the steps because we want people to be notified that there is a change in level.4:27
  47. There's always a contrast between a countertop and a cabinet underneath so people could see where the counter ends and the cabinet stops.4:35
  48. That's a fine line between creating a home but also fill it in with elements of longevity without falling into the trap of making it look like an institution or4:42
  49. a hospital because no one wants to live in an institution.4:53
  50. Care if I park you guys or should I come over here?4:56
  51. No, I can handle that.4:58
  52. Community space for LGBTQ people is very important.5:00
  53. Sometimes we don't feel that conventional spaces are safe for us.5:04
  54. You need a hammer.5:09
  55. Do you have something you'd add?5:10
  56. I am.5:11
  57. So the community center has become the beating heart of the community at large and intergenerational space.5:12
  58. Researchers found a positive association between intergenerational interaction and many factors for older adults including physical health, psychosocial health, cognitive function, social relationships and quality of life.5:20
  59. And I dream one day when senior living isn't a generational without even forcing it.5:37
  60. I'm hoping that we can really bring multiple generations together in a place that is meaningful and intentional.5:43
  61. We have to choose community.5:51
  62. It is so important.5:53
  63. Imagine a building for older adults and a building for families and they share amenities.5:55
  64. What's wrong with that?6:00
  65. So as we create new neighborhoods and new cities and new environments, thinking about that, connectivity, intergenerational relationship, when you design a space for everyone, then everybody can use it.6:02

English speaking practice with Vox's B2 narration on senior housing design

This clip is a Vox narration about The Pride, an affordable senior housing community in Boston built for LGBTQ seniors and allies. The narrator opens with, "Welcome to The Pride, an affordable senior housing community in Boston, a place for LGBTQ seniors and allies to age safely and in community." That one sentence carries the whole premise of the clip, and it packs five ideas into a single breath.

The recording sits at B2 and runs at 183 words per minute, faster than 47 percent of the catalogue, so this is not a beginner's warm up. It opens with a short resident exchange before the narrator takes over to walk through the building's design choices one by one. If you want english speaking practice that forces you to keep pace with a real broadcast voice rather than a slowed down teaching clip, this is that kind of line.

The language in this clip: a colloquial aside and two dense narrator lines

Three lines from this opening are worth stopping on before you move past them, because each one asks for something different from your mouth.

None of the reduced forms tracked for this recording show up here, so what makes these lines hard is stress placement on multisyllable words like outnumber and stigma, not speed. Getting them right is really a question of how to pronounce english words with more than one stressed syllable.

  • "I'm like, I key key with the old gays." The "I'm like" opening is casual reported speech, the kind a native speaker drops into an answer without planning it, and it sits oddly next to the more formal narration around it.
  • "Census Bureau projects that for the first time in the United States, adults over the age of 65 will outnumber children under 18." One long sentence with a comparison buried in the middle: get the stress on "outnumber" wrong and the whole point disappears.
  • "There's the stigma on senior living as a place where you go to die." Short and blunt right after a long statistic, the pace change is the point: say it slower and flatter than the sentence before it.

How to shadow this clip for american accent practice, line by line

Work through the opening in three passes instead of one straight run, since the pace and the tone both shift inside these lines.

  • Start with lines 1 to 5, the short resident exchange, to find the natural rhythm before the narration speeds up.
  • Repeat line 6, "Welcome to The Pride, an affordable senior housing community in Boston, a place for LGBTQ seniors and allies to age safely and in community," five times on its own, since it never pauses and packs five ideas into one breath.
  • Move to line 14 and mark the stress on "outnumber" before you say the sentence aloud, then shadow this line against the recording.
  • Finish with line 16, "There's the stigma on senior living as a place where you go to die," and slow your delivery to match its flatter tone against line 14's statistic pace.
  • Loop the four lines above once more at full speed, as a short english shadowing practice run, to check the american accent holds through the pace change between them.
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