Soundscape as a design strategy for landscape architectural praxis

M.D. Fowler1,1,

aSchool of Landscape Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Design,

RMIT University, P.O. Box 2476V, Melbourne Victoria 3001, Australia

Abstract

In this paper I introduce the notion of soundscape and the terminology used by the interdisci-plinary field of soundscape studies, founded by composer and activist R. Murray Schafer in thelate 1960s. Using the example of 3 recent landscape architecture design studios taught at RMITUniversity, Melbourne Australia, I examine important theoretical concepts of soundscape studiesand how these concepts were used to guide a number of design exercises and design projects ofthe studios. I also further reflect on the pedagogical aspects of teaching soundscape to designstudents and the larger implications of such methodologies for the field of design in the builtenvironment.

Keywords: design education, design methods, urban design, interdisciplinary, landscapearchitecture.

That the acoustic environment has been historically contained within the scientific domain ofroom acoustics (Hellstrom, 2003; Peters, 2010; DeBodt, 2006) has meant that the identities ofacoustician and designer have remained distinct. This separation of domains is evident whenexamining the traditional role of the room acoustician as primarily concerned with the processesof measurement and evaluation of the auditory qualities of an interior space. For an architect ordesigner, the larger emphasis on design as a compositional process that sums a number of com-peting streams of engagement has often relegated auditory space to a domain generally accessedonly through the channels of acoustic consulting. This approach has foreshadowed the possibilitythat at the design concept stage, novel forms that produce auditory qualities might be rigorouslyconsidered by the designer. The investment within design pedagogy of introducing concepts andideas about the sounding environment (in its myriad guises and contexts) has mostly been at theservice, or as a consequence of, the seductive immediacy that visual articulations of space pro-vide us (Boyer, 1996; Berger, 1977; Till, 1999). As Pizarro (2009) has observed, contemporarydesign education has revelled in an absolute embrace of fantastic forms, marvellous facades andstunning glossy pin-ups, though with the advent of digital technologies and the ubiquity of com-puting platforms, the relegation of the auditory environment as one addressed only in post-designconsultation is increasingly becoming marginalized by the rise in what Blesser & Salter (2007)describe as spatial auditory awareness.

Of course there have been numerous past calls for considering architectural design as anengagement with the sensory qualities of site (Pallasmaa, 2005; Zardini, 2006; Lynch, 1995; Holl

∗Corresponding author1Now at Fachgebiet Audiokommunikation, Technische Universitat Berlin, EN-8 Einsteinufer 17c, 10587 Berlin,

Germany

Preprint submitted to Design Studies May 22, 2012

et al., 2006; Sherriden & Van Lengen, 2003), or the appropriation of contemporary theoreticalpositions on site and spatiality (Deleuze & Guatari, 1980; Massumi, 2002; Lefebvre, 1991; Kahn,1995; Rendell, 2006) as a means to drive innovation within design. Within the field of landscapearchitecture, the pressing contemporary need to look beyond a reading of the landscape in purelyaesthetic terms (Bourassa, 1991; Tveit et al., 2006; Cosgrove, 1998) is what Griot (2008) suggestsin his call for a new type of engagement with space and time. For John B. Jackson, the urgencyof what Pizarro (2009) has nominated as the ominous environmental changes and populationinversion between rural and urban communities (United Nations, 2007) seems already implicatedin his reading of the terms by which contemporary landscapes must now be conceptualized:

Landscape is not a natural feature of the environment but a synthetic space, a man-made system of spaces superimposed on the face of the land, functioning and evolv-ing not according to natural laws but to serve a community—for the collective char-acter of the landscape is the one thing that all generations and all points of viewhave agreed upon. A landscape is thus a space deliberately created to speed-up orslow-down the process of nature (Jackson, 1997, p. 304–305).

For composer, theorist and activist R. Murray Schafer, Jackson’s notion of the landscape as amalleable environment in which time is a function readily perceived and foregrounded by thedesigner holds a currency that can be notably traced in Schafer’s conception of soundscape. Asa term derived from landscape, soundscape is the designation of any human-audible soundingenvironment (Schafer, 1977). Drawing from Heidegger’s notion of place (Heiddeger, 1971),Schafer creates the opportunity for an interdisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between siteand the sensation of listening through what Truax (2001) describes as the importance of soundas a mediator between human and environment, and furthermore, the notion that active listeninginvolves an auditor embedded within the soundscape.

Soundscape studies, as a phenomenological research area, addresses what Seamon (2000)identifies as paying attention to specific instances of auditory phenomena in an effort to revealgeneral qualities and characteristics of the essential nature of the phenomena and its presenceand meaning for the experience of human beings. Sounds of an environment then are analogousto the assertion of Heiddeger (1962) that thematic space is a function of the encounter betweenDasein and localised objects. The concept of place then arises as the manner in which soundobjects encountered within the homogeneous space of Nature define a space. For Truax (2001)a soundscape represents not merely the presence of an acoustic environment (which could benatural or simulated), but also the potential of such an environment to communicate informationto a listener. Both Truax and Schafer have argued that, in particular, natural environments andtheir acoustic behaviours produce particularly meaningful experiences to auditors, and thus thesounds within them constitute a type of mediating language between listener and environment.

It is primarily from these positions that I will explore in this paper the approaches and goalsin the teaching of 3 recent landscape architecture design studios, BLINDSCAPE, SoniferousCity and liminal. Though each of the studios were connected in some manner to the urbanenvironment, their scope, program and design outcomes remain diverse save for the fact thattheir primary impetus interrogated how the landscape architect might also assume the role ofsoundscape architect.

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1. Teaching soundscape as a design field: tactics and techniques

1.1. The terminology of Soundscape studies

The forces that led Schafer to found a new research field in the late 1960s at Simon Frasier Uni-versity (Vancouver, Canada) that dealt with the sounding environment as an acoustic ecology

arose directly from the legacy of rapid industrialization and urban growth in the period after theSecond World War. That the environment of the city and the rising health issues of noise pollution(Skånberg & Ohrstrom, 2002; Gidlof-Gunnarsson & Ohrstrom, 2007; Clark & Sansfeld, 2007)was being dealt with by urban planners and architects in a manner that Truax (2001) describesas relying on the traditional “signal energy transfer model” of noise engineering, relegated theconcept of acoustic design within the urban context as one purely focused on the attenuation oramelioration of sound sources. Schafer thus sought to focus on “positive soundscape” awarenesswithin the city in what Truax (2001) would later describe as an approach located within a com-

municational model of auditory analysis where understanding the semiotics and cultural contextof a soundscape played an equally important role as the investigation into the physics of soundsignals. This position then allowed Schafer to extend the notion of soundscape into the realm ofcomposed electro-acoustic musical works. These types of compositions are usually comprisedof field recordings of natural or urban areas, edited, manipulated or sliced together to form eco-logical narratives that sit at the threshold between traditional musical aesthetics, sound art andlandscape aesthetics.

Schafer’s multidisciplinary team then was heavily influenced by the other established electro-acoustic composers within the group, Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp in particular. Assuch, their analytic method and development of a new terminology for describing a taxonomyof a soundscape draws on what Arkette (2004) has noted as a music-centric discourse. IndeedSchafer’s concept of a “tuning of the world” implies the act of urban sound composition, thoughhe limits his nomenclature of sound typologies to three primary types which describe sounds ofany acoustic environment—keynote, soundmark and signal. These three primary terms are cen-tral to the theory of soundscape, as is an investigation of the auditors, or the acoustic community

of the environment under question (including their cultural, social, political or aesthetic expecta-tions). Thus the three sound classes of Schafer (1977) were developed as a means to understandthe particular sensory experiences that meaningfully connect an auditor to a site.

Soundmarks are those sounds that are considered culturally significant or deemed by anacoustic community to warrant preservation (such as church/temple bells, town square clocks,foghorns), while keynote sounds are those which are continuously operable within a site and forma background (e.g., traffic, air conditioner sounds, muzak). Sound signals represent foregroundedsounds within a soundscape and thus may dynamically change and include local soundmarks,though as Truax (1999) and Augoyard & Torgue (2005) have noted, within modern cities theincrease in the SPL (sound pressure level) of emergency warning signals is a direct consequenceof the increased noise floor level of urban spaces. Truax (2001) also argues that within urbanenvironments, sound signals are overwhelmingly generated through electro-acoustic means andare contributing to the masking of historical soundmarks and thus producing lo-fi (low fidelity)auditory environments.

1.2. Studio exercises

Perhaps one of the challenges in implementing the theoretical framework of soundscape studiesinto the teaching of landscape design comes from the large volume of information and listeningexperience required in training designers to understand what it means to critically listen. Though

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prior musical knowledge is unnecessary, an initial first step is asking students if they play orhave learned to play an instrument. This may seem like it should be a valuable prior experiencefor the studio participants, but often it can mean that they rely on aesthetic listening rather thandevelop critical listening techniques. The critique then of Arkette (2004) is a valid one given thatdesign in the urban landscape is an environment removed from the aesthetics of the electronicmusic studio. One of the most valuable exercises that I use throughout the course of the studiois asking the students to keep a sound diary (see Figure 1). The function of the diary is to allowstudents to start developing a way in which to conceptualize sound in graphic terms, and also bydescribing a sound using written language. Often, exercises are drawn from A Sound Education:

100 exercises in listening and sound-making (Schafer, 1992), which contains numerous smallexercises such as “what is the first sound you heard after waking,” or “what is your first soundmemory.” The sound diary has been valuable in encouraging students to creatively notate soundsusing a variety of methods, and thus increase their critical listening skills. In addition to the sound

Figure 1: Student sound diary examples. c© Stephanie Kumar and Joyce Ho, 2010.

diary, the technique of soundwalking is an important primer for critical listening. Widely usedwithin the field of soundscape studies by Westerkamp (2006), soundwalking involves a groupof participants following a pre-agreed route through an environment in silence. The walks areconducted every week, last around 30mins and followed by a discussion. As Westerkamp (1974)notes:

A soundwalk is any excursion whose main purpose is listening to the environment.It is exposing our ears to every sound around us no matter where we are. We maybe at home, we may be walking across a downtown street, through the park, alongon the beach; we may be sitting in a doctor’s office, in a hotel lobby, in a bank; wemay be shopping in a supermarket, a department store, or a Chinese grocery store;we may be standing at the airport, the train station, the bus stop. Wherever we gowe will give our ears priority. They have been neglected by us for a long time and,

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as a result, we have done little to develop an acoustic environment of good quality(Westerkamp, 1974, p. 18).

Both the sound diary and soundwalk techniques are used as a means to activate new vocabular-ies for students so that initial descriptions of the sounding environment within the urban contextfocus less on on value judgements (“I hate the sound of...”) and more on specific qualities ofthe sound in question (“I hate the sound of...because...”). Using simple qualitative terms such asdescribing pitch as high, middle or low (with approximate Hz ranges), loudness in approximatedB ranges, typology as natural, mechanical or human, and periodicity in terms of approximatefluctuation times in seconds or minutes, quickly enables an assessment of the difference betweensound sources. A further classification of sounds revolves around students nominating importantsoundmarks, keynotes and signals of an environment, debating the relevance of these classifica-tions for particular acoustic communities, and then using the acquired technical terminology todistinguish why these sounds are different and create different responses from various acousticcommunities.

That there is a real connection between the way sound behaves within an environment ac-cording to the materiality of the site in question is also an important concept for teaching sound-scape to design students. For landscape architects in particular, the impact of topography, water,flora and fauna as active or passive aural embellishments (Blesser & Salter, 2007) is perhaps thestrongest suggestion for the re-unification between what Carter (2003) and Ingold (2009) see asthe unnecessary separation between notions of soundscape and landscape. As one student fromthe Soniferous City studio commented:

A useful class task we conducted was researching an acoustic quality [mine beingechoic] and considering its presence on the royal park site. This allowed me toconsider how certain acoustic features are accentuated in some places rather thanothers as well as inform me of the structures and materiality required to potentiallyutilize them in my own intervention.

I have found that asking students to investigate particular acoustic behaviours like reverbera-

tion, echo and filtering, then locating sites that fit these typologies, or classifying their own sitesin these terms engages them in the important aspect of identifying the nature of sound as anephemeral phenomenon intimately connected to the materials of an environment. One of themost dramatic means for illustrating this point has been to visit a near-anechoic chamber (a roomwith near-zero sound reflection). Using a simple percussion instrument such as a Japanese woodblock (mokugyo) to produce a short and sharp high-pitch sound, any room or environment thathas even a small amount of reflective surfaces allows the sound of the instrument to perpetu-ate past its short initial energy peak (the phenomena of reverberation). Playing the instrumentwithin a near-anechoic chamber produces only a dull thud and aptly demonstrates to students thecommunicative power of surfaces to impart vital spatial auditory information.

For the BLINDSCAPE studio, surfaces and their aid to navigation were a key aspect of thebrief which asked the question of “what is a park is to those who are visually impaired, and howmight landscape design be informed by the acoustic and tactile needs of the visually impaired?”Using the experiences of a profoundly blind and visually impaired person, a large urban greenwedge in Melbourne Australia that contains the Merri Creek’s route to the Yarra river was locatedas a site for design interventions. As a highly varied site in terms of topography, program andland zones, the importance of auditory and tactile sense marks was highlighted in a discussionwith the two visually impaired studio guests:

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There’s an air conditioner that I pass on the way to work, almost as if its breakingdown, but I hear that and understand where I am on my route. If they fixed it, itwould completely alter my navigation of that route.

I’ve followed tactile marks, thinking I was walking to a road crossing and endedup in a telephone booth. It seems like nothing, but for the visually impaired thatdetour has confused their navigation and understanding of where they are.

An initial exercise for students (see Figure 2) was to investigate the auditory and tactile nature ofthe site while blindfolded in order to evaluate its ease of navigation for the visually impaired orprofoundly blind. Using analytic methods that tracked topography, surface texture and auditoryfeatures such as the location of soundmarks and keynotes, a sensory mapping representing thosepertinent features for navigation of the site enabled the quick evaluation and location of possibleintervention points.

Figure 2: Merri creek mapping exercise from BLINDSCPAE studio. c© Jack Tupper, 2010.

2. Notation and beyond notation

That students are increasingly becoming reliant on digital tools for the representation of designconcepts and ideas is an important trend in modern pedagogical approaches. When consideringthe acoustic environment, there is inevitability that digital tools will be required in the capturing

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of data. For all of the design studios I have taught, a most important element is the training ofstudents in audio capture equipment for recording the acoustic conditions of a site. The typi-cal tools used include hardware and software devices and the appropriate formats and editingapproaches that make best use of the information for designers.

Field recordings of audio information can nowadays be completely achieved through a mo-bile phone, though there are distinct disadvantages of this approach. The primary difficultiesin using an iPhone or smart phone for audio recording comes from issues of fidelity and spatialsoundfield rendering. That there are such high standards required for the presentation of imagery,diagrams, photos, models etc., within design schools is an equally useful argument applicable toaudio recording. The higher the fidelity, the more information present. As such, training studentsin using proper stereo microphone techniques (such as ORTF1), using high sample rates (48kHz)and .wav formats (rather than compressed .mp3) allows for stereo simulations and reproductionsof captured soundscapes that more readily communicate meaningful spatial information. Intro-ducing other recording technologies such binaural head and ambisonic B-format are also usefulthough such formats require specialized editing suites or multi-channel playback environmentsfor soundfield reproduction. A basic aim of the studios I have taught has been to enable studentsto capture a stereo soundfield from a site in high fidelity, digitize the soundfiles, apply simpleediting techniques (fade in/out, multi-track editing, mastering) with freeware audio software andconduct simple acoustic analysis on the soundfiles (e.g., analyse the sonogram/spectrum and dB).

Figure 3: Royal Park sound diagram from Soniferous City studio. c© Jamie McHutchison, 2009.

In addition to capturing soundfields, obtaining sound pressure levels (SPL) of a site can alsobe useful in understanding the general acoustic conditions, and in particular, when using SPLA

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weightings,2 to gauge the loudness levels in psychoacoustic terms. But how this informationbecomes manifested and disseminated through a visual language of mappings or diagrams thatare engaging to a designer rather than a scientist is often an obstacle that needs much negotiation,patience and re-working. Most approaches by students have seemed to flow into two streams ofgraphical representation: the suggestive or qualitative diagram (see Figure 3), or the quantitativemapping (see Figure 4). Both can be effective in describing the general acoustic conditions of asite, though I encourage augmented presentations of these types of mappings through the use ofstereo soundfield recordings to highlight particular acoustic aspects within the site.

Figure 4: Melbourne CBD SPLA diagram from liminal studio. c© Natarsha Lamb, 2010.

3. Experimental design actions in the designing process

The path to design implementation when integrating ideas about soundscape is often best servedthrough generative design experiments in various media. The criticism of Carter (2003) thatthe focus of soundscape studies has split into those concerned with electro-acoustic composi-tion using advanced technologies for the capture of soundfields, and those activists involved inpreserving threatened soundscapes is a useful observation for design pedagogy in that it allowslandscape architecture students to challenge what Mags Adams et al. (2006) and Leus (2011)note as the lack of a suitable acoustic framework when urban planning models are under consid-eration. A particularly useful exercise then for students is to compose a short 3min soundscapecomposition based on auditory samples from their site. By using readily available freeware au-dio editing tools (like Audacity), the exercise seeks to give the opportunity for students to engagetheir aural imagination through the question: “what might be an ideal soundscape design for thissite, and what will be the social impact of your design.”

The results of such an exercise have been mixed. The impact of electronic music withinpopular culture and those commonly available tools such as Garage Band have created a situation

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in which music production technology has been democratized. Because of this there is a realdifficulty for some students in separating out ideas about musical sound and environmental sound.Using the compositions of Truax and Westerkamp though is an important foil for this exercisein that compositions such as Into the Labyrinth (a work generated from field recordings of urbanareas in India) and Pacific Fanfare (a number of sound scenes composed from 10 soundmarks ofVancouver) seem to highlight for students the potential for connecting listener to sound sourceand environmental context as a landscape brief. But inevitably some students end up creatingcompositions focused wholly on musical parameters (like superimposed, artificial repetitiousmelodic patterns or beats), but the most successful compositions attend to the particular qualitiesof the site in question, highlighting, amplifying or developing soundmarks or signals that arealready prevalent in the environment.

To think specifically about the connection of sound behaviours in a site as a function of theratio between absorptive and reflective materials, their geometries and the types of sources ac-tively contributing to its acoustic identity can also highlight the often overlooked qualities ofthe urban environment. Asking landscape architecture students to radically re-think the fabricof the city is perhaps not a new approach in light of the recent theories of landscape urbanism(Waldheim, 2006), though to radicalise the geometric and sound absorptive properties of spacethat produce readily identifiable acoustic signatures provides an impetus for testing the limits bywhich soundscape design may infiltrate urban design (see Figure 5).

Figure 5: Design concept for Melbourne CBD from liminal studio showing radical landscape intervention through topo-graphic and material means. c© Christina Touloupus, 2010.

That topography can be an important tool for the design of soundscapes through its abilityto filter, attenuate and hide sound sources was a particular focus of the BLINDSCAPE studiowhose site was the Merri Creek green wedge located in suburban Melbourne. The abundance ofa natural environment housing such diverse landscape typologies as open woodland to wetlandsall in close contact with multiple planning zones, from light industrial to residential, allowed stu-dents to interrogate both the existing connection between soundscape conditions and topographicfeatures, as well as how a radical change in topography might allow for design interventions that

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produced particular acoustic qualities (see Figure 6). By developing a set of site-specific designand analysis tools that would manipulate topography to generate particular acoustic conditions—such as echo or reverberation through enclosure with hard materials, sound absorption and fil-tering with soft landscape objects, plantings and green walls—design interventions were able totake on a multi-functional roles beyond catering to the pure aesthetic considerations of landscapeform.

(a) Merri Creek site detail

(b) Merri Creek site plan

Figure 6: (a) Conceptual design of localised landscape elements for sound absorption. (b) Site plan of topographicinterventions for generating soundscape manipulation (absorption, reverberation, filtering). c© Simon Meade, 2010.

4. Communicating soundscape designs

Perhaps a difficulty in using the theory of soundscape as the basis for generating landscape archi-tecture is the reliance on particular visual modes of communication and dissemination within thefield of design. Though the studios I have taught have sought to develop listening skills as an aidto conceptualizing the power of acoustic interventions to drive novel forms of landscape archi-tecture, the ways in which one can experience a sense of the design outside of its 2-dimensional

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representation or 3-dimensional model is always difficult. Oral presentations obviously aid inthe telling of the narrative of the student’s work, and in some cases using onomatopoeia in thevisual language of describing the function of the design can generate a more immediate impacton the auditory qualities of the design intent (see Figure 7). Often designs require a greater

Figure 7: Design concept for Royal Park from Soniferous City studio showing sound generating devices embedded inroadway and footpath as a means to diversify the keynote sounds of the traffic. c© Jamie McHutchinson, 2009.

deal of verbal presentation lest the subtle acoustic qualities of the design be overshadowed bythe tendency to focus on the visual presentation of the concept. For the example, in Figure 8,a student from the BLINDSCAPE studio created a subtle means of acoustic way-finding forvisually-impaired visitors to Merri Creek. By using a combination of distinctive materials atparticular entrance/exit points to the site, the reflective acoustic behaviours of stone and pavingwere combined with the filtering qualities of offset wooden walls that partitioned the path fromthe nearby sound sources emanating from the creek. Visitors who are visually-impaired, andespecially those who use a cane, are provided with a distinct acoustic typology as a means toconstruct an aural memory (a common technique used by the visually impaired). Given that thereverberation of these entrance/exits points sits in dramatic relief to the qualities experienced inthe rest of the site provides a subtle, yet tell-tale acoustic signature that is integrated into a largervisual aesthetic regarding the landscape as a whole.

5. Reflections

The limitations of the studios I have discussed in this paper have come not so much from theinability of students to engage with sound as a parameter for landscape design, but their over-

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Figure 8: Design concept for exit/entrance to Merri Creek from BLINDSCAPE studio. c© Jack Tupper, 2010.

whelming desire to create auditory simulations that match the levels of detail achievable in cur-rent modeling and illustration softwares. As one student comments:

The liminal studio was great for introducing soundscape and how it can be anotheraspect for considering in designing, but not being able to really hear what my designwould sound like, and only being able to make a approximation using Audacity, orusing sound recording from site was disappointing.

This is perhaps an aspect that design schools will inevitable be facing if soundscape or acousticqualities become more readily addressed in design pedagogy. Outside of softwares specificallyused for room acoustic modelling (such as those used in testing concert hall designs etc.) thereare currently only limited and very expensive resources regarding acoustic simulation of out-door environments. A few options exist, such as the software Odeon, though to utilize thesewithin landscape design requires extensive introductory training and the configuring of the soft-

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ware for open environments. Until there is a greater need, or greater investment in tools forlandscape architects that situate acoustic modelling directly into more common modellers suchas Rhinoceros3D or AutoCAD, a reliance on a basic knowledge of the behaviour of sound andways in which it can be managed must first be embraced.

But the increasing proliferation of electro-acoustic sound diffusion in urban areas has alsogiven design students a new area in which to explore. There seems to be an increasing den-sity not only of urban computing via screens, visual projection or smart facades within moderncities (McGuire, 2008), but also loudspeakers and PA devices. Perhaps an unintended influenceof using the Schafer, Truax and Westerkamp’s conceptualization of sound design is that somestudents simply create electro-acoustic soundscapes, to be played back over multiple loudspeak-ers, and utilized for any environment. The difficulty of these types of project designs relates notsimply to the notion that design praxis within the built environment must engage in some deepernotion about site, ecology, program or social function, but that the role of landscape architectsas custodians of the landscape is to similarly understand the impact of technology as a shapingdevice for society’s relationship to the environment (Church, 2008). Given that the whole no-tion of soundscape itself seeks to delicately balance what Franklin (2000) notes as the impactof technology as an opportunity and a problem for urban sound environments, landscape designthat simply presents sound art installations within the urban environment may suffer from whatArkette (2004) identifies as the tendency for acoustic ecologists to only superficially engage withthe qualities of urban soundscapes, and moreover ignore the expectations and needs of the localacoustic community.

It is perhaps what Pizarro (2009) notes as the rapidly changing urban environment, newpopulation density inversions (United Nations, 2007) and the immediate impact on health andwell-being of a noisy future that remains the greatest argument for assimilating the next gener-ation of architecture and design students with a knowledge of strategies for shaping an acousticenvironment. That modern cities are increasingly finding themselves in greater mechanized den-sities is evidenced in the suggestions by Gidlof-Gunnarsson & Ohrstrom (2007) that, “it hasbeen estimated that about 80 million (approximately 20) of the European Unions populationsuffer from noise levels considered unacceptable (above 65dB in so-called ’black area’) and anadditional 170 million are living in ’grey areas’ exposed to noise levels between 55 and 65 dB.”Additionally, there have been numerous studies (Clark & Sansfeld, 2007; Skånberg & Ohrstrom,2002) into the link between stress effects manifested in physiological systems and psychosocialbehavioural patterns, which also indicate that the effect of the quality of the urban soundscape isan important contemporary health issue.

Certainly, that design within the urban environment must integrate myriad notions about site,mobility and social concerns remains a constant reminder of the complexity of forces that shapethe qualities of the built environment. How exemplary urban design models will negotiate suchqualities when delivered via the traditional approaches to urban design praxis may be an increas-ingly difficult position to sustain, particularly in light of evidence that suggests the soundscapeof cities as becoming an increasingly important aspect for consideration. Perhaps a strength thenof the studios I have discussed here is not so much the absolute accuracy by which the acous-tic qualities of a design can be measured or disseminated, but the opportunities that arise forstudents when considering the landscape as capable of constructing particular acoustic qualitieswhich may consequently shape and form new social relations.

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Notes

1Short for Office de Radiodiffusion Television Francaise, a stereo microphone arrangement in which two cardiodmicrophones are spaced approximately 17cm apart at an angle of 110◦.

2Given that human hearing is relatively insensitive at frequencies below 100Hz and compresses at sounds above5kHz, A-weighting of SPL (notated as SPLA) involves the application of filtering curves to allow for the most accuratemethod for measuring perceived loudness of a sound source.

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