Chapter 7 References

CONCLUSION

As human beings, we interact with both our social and our physical environment bt using all our senses, thereby “becoming aware of events, objects, and other people, as well as the space within which these are embedded. Each of our senses play a unique and complementary role in creating our internal experience of the external world.

In contrast with preliterate societies, however, our modern technological society tends to devalue hearing, smell, taste and touch, preferring sight as the principal means for sensing the environment. Traditionally, we therefore both create and experience architecture visually, rather than with all our senses.

Although we think of hearing primarily as how we sense such active sound sources a speech, sirens, or snapping twigs, it is also how we sense the passive acoustics of our environment. Walls and open doorways change active sounds in a perceptible way, as do enclosed spaces. If we listen carefully, we can sense a wall or an open doorway by the presence or absence of an echo, and the depth of a cave by its resonances. We can also hear how the acoustics of a space, whether bathroom or concert hall, changes the way a voice or a violin sounds.

Even when we are unable to form an aural image of a space, and even when we are unaware that a space changes sound, spatial acoustics, whether of a living room, a concert hall, an office building lobby, or a cathedral, can influence our mental state. Despite its importance, however, auditory spatial awareness remains subtle, often unconscious, and seldom recognized outside of those professional disciplines which focus on aural architecture.

The aural architecture often cannot be identified because the design, selection, or creation of an aural space is distributed among a wide variety of individuals-including those actually using the space- who are not aware of their contributions, and because the acoustic attributes of the space are often an accidental byproduct of impersonal, socioeconomic force. In essence, an aural architect is more of an abstraction that a person. A single discipline cannot claim ownership of aural architecture because it is far more fluid and dynamic than visual architecture. Yet, even without a professional owner, aural architecture influences us all.

As modern humans living in familiar space with omnipresent electric illumination, most of us can see little use in having auditory spatial awareness. But should the light fall, the need to navigate or orient in a space by listening will remind us of how useful it is to sense space without vision. Similarly, we sometimes “feel” someone approaching from behind even when that someone is silent. These uses of auditory spatial awareness most likely served our prehistoric forebears well. Living in often ill-lit environments without reliable light source, and facing ever present danger from predators, they would have found hearing a valuable complement to seeing space and object.

The developing brain of an infant, and specifically its auditory cortex, responds to acoustic exposure by adapting to specific soundscapes provided by the family subculture. A rural farm with a rich natural soundscape, especially at night without artificial illumination, provides children with opportunity and motivation to experience a complex aural environment by listening. Similarly, a musical family encourages its children to use hearing as a primary means for social and emotional connections. In contrast, children who grow up in a noisy urban city apartment with acoustic porous walls may experience auditory overload, and therefore ignore auditory spatial awareness. Extensive use of television, video games and headphones connected to portable audio devices does not provide opportunities for hearing space.

As a individuals, we can enhance our ability to hear space by choosing to exercise that ability in our daily lives. As a culture, we can create social and architectural opportunities to encourage our fellow citizens, especially our children, to acquire spatial awareness. When many of us attend to our environment by listening, our cultural is more likely to invest in spaces that have a complex and socially desirable aural architecture. In turn, a rich aural architecture is more likely to stimulate development of that auditory spatial awareness. And so on. The process is self-reinforcing.

The review of aural architecture in different periods and culture showed that choices were mostly artifacts of socioeconomic force unrelated to acoustic. Non-aural economic, religious, political and social imperatives determined how an acoustic space was selected or designed, and only afterward did the aural architecture become apparent. Even when constructing musical space where the importance of acoustic was clearly recognized, other imperatives often had a strong and competing influence on the final design.