3/25/2019 Soundscape Architecture: A New Way to Experience Famous Buildings | ArchDaily

ArchDaily Architecture News Soundscape Architecture: A New Way to Experience Famous Buildings

Soundscape Architecture: A New Way to Experience Famous

Buildings
09:30 - 23 February, 2014 | by Rory Stott
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There are many forms of architectural representation - from sketches to construction drawings to
photographs - but they all privilege vision over any of the other senses. This problem has perhaps only
been exacerbated by the internet, which has made it easier to 'experience' buildings from afar, to the
detriment of four of the five senses.

Now though, Karen Van Lengen, the Kenan Professor of Architecture at the University of Virginia, has
created Soundscape Architecture, a website that aims to redress this imbalance. In collaboration with
artist James Welty and musician Troy Rogers, Van Lengen has used sound recordings of iconic
architectural spaces to create synaesthetic animations and musical compositions of the ambient noise
there.

Read on a er the break for more about Soundscape Architecture

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"We don’t study how to listen in architecture, which has been promoted as a visual field since the
Renaissance", said Van Lengen in an interview with Urban Omnibus. "My ambition with Soundscape
Architecture is not to show how to design for sound but to show people how to listen."

The entry point to Soundscape Architecture is comprised of a virtual street, lined with iconic buildings.
The ambient noise of each building is projected onto the street, and as you 'walk' past, you can quickly
compare the unique auditory atmosphere of each building, from the 'oceanic' buzz of New York's
Grand Central Terminal to the New York Public Library, a quiet hum punctured by scraping chairs and
footsteps.
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'Entering' the buildings gives a more in-depth study of their sound, with an interpretive animation and
musical composition; a diagram details the shape and location of the space, the surface materials
which help to create the sound, and the number of people that contribute to this atmosphere.

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3/25/2019 Soundscape Architecture: A New Way to Experience Famous Buildings | ArchDaily

Van Lengen is generating a sense of space and time which is o en lost in purely visual depictions of
buildings. "Sound is an intersection of the container of a space and the people in it, and that
intersection is never the same," she says.

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Cite: Rory Stott. "Soundscape Architecture: A New Way to Experience Famous Buildings" 23 Feb 2014. ArchDaily.
Accessed 25 Mar 2019. <https://www.archdaily.com/479729/soundscape-architecture-a-new-way-to-experience-
famous-buildings/> ISSN 0719-8884

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zaza • 5 years ago

Cool to read an article on sound in architecture. And I totally agree with the initial statement
that communicating on the non-visual aspects of architecture is a complicated task.
However, is this kind of initiative really going to "show people how to listen" ? I am quite
skeptical about that… The result is still a VISUAL animation. And even the musical
compositions only vaguely relate to the real soundscape. Do you listen or "sense" differently
that soundscape once you have seen the animation or listen to the composition ? I don't.
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charles > zaza • 5 years ago

agreed -- as a field recordist myself (and one who is interested in architectural sound
and space) i am sympathetic to this project, but, really, it falls sort of flat... no need to
retain superfluous (sorry, 'synaesthetic') connection to visual imagery.
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