Contemporary architecture deals primarily with how things look, how things make a user feel, etc., but what about how it sounds? Even though our ancestors (Romans, Greeks, Mayans...) have dealt with this sense as a primary factor for design, somewhere along the line we as humans have adapted to the acoustics of our natural ecosystems (soundscapes), we have readjusted to urban soundscapes, public gathering spaces and enclosed dwellings. Moreover, post-industrial revolution technology has created an abundance of noise, a polluting agent. Some artists even dub this phenomenon as the natural rhythm of the city (Fontana, Bill, 2011). During the Middle Ages, smell was the unspoken plague of cities, today it is sound (Kimmelman, 2015).
And so, planners begin to think of ways to make cities more quiet and Architects how to make buildings better isolated. But is sound not an intrinsic part of the city? Are we not part of this rhythm? Don’t many of us live in them because we actually enjoy this ”natural rhythm”? Is there nothing in this that can be used to our benefit as a society?
Is there so much noise all around us today that we’ve become inured to our aural senses?
Is it too optimistic to say that instead of disregarding it and trying to delete it, it can rather be transformed into a soundscape of change, transforming into a powerful tool that supports the city and its social groups.
