F E AT U R E By Usue Ruiz Arana
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Thinking with my ears Winner of the Landscape Institute Innovation Award, this guide was described by the judges as: ‘A compelling, timely and immersive study that breaks new ground exploring an area of landscape practice not commonly known or understood.’ 1. Active use of sound in design, High Street Glasgow, a prospective public realm scheme developed by OOBE © OOBE
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his guide borrows its title from an article by composers and sound artists Bruce Odland and S am Auinger: “Hearing Perspective (Think with your Ears)”.¹ In the article, Odland and Auinger questioned why the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) sculpture garden sounded like any taxi stand in NYC, or why quiet cars were quiet only on the inside. The answer to those questions, they proposed, is that we live in a culture that privileges the eye in decision making and budget allocation, while the solution is to think with our ears. Many professions think with their ears. Doctors for example, train their listening to detect abnormal sounds in the internal organs of patients; similarly, plant engineers and car mechanics attune their ears to detect sound changes in motors. Despite the crucial
role that landscape architects play in shaping the soundscapes that surround us, listening does not play a primary role in their training and practice. Landscape architects mainly consider sound as noise to be mitigated. Sound as a positive feature is less frequently thought of, except in the creation of sensorial landscapes that seek to include features that target all the senses. In the last twenty years, considerable research has been carried out on soundscapes from a variety of perspectives. In urban planning, this wave of research was triggered by the Environmental Noise Directive (END, Directive 2002/49/EC) that recognised the detrimental effect that noise has on human health and wellbeing, and required the identification and management of noise pollution and
the protection of good environmental soundscapes in the form of quiet areas. A subsequent technical guide to identify quiet areas was produced that included the soundscape approach as a suitable methodology to that end.² This approach researches the soundscape first through human perception, and afterwards by acoustic measurements, and is guided by the following publications: 3 with further parts to be developed. This article introduces the reader to key aspects of a guide that builds on this research and expands beyond it to incorporate findings from acoustic ecology, ecoacoustics, bioacoustics, sound studies and sound art to demonstrate the many advantages of incorporating attentive listening and sound into landscape architecture practice. The guide starts with general 29
