An exploration into sound and its relationship to stress, in cities, through design.
Urban Echo explores sound and its relationship to stress, in cities, through urban planning, architecture, design futuring, and sound research. The New York Police Department reports around 1 million sound complaints a year. Nationwide it’s estimated that 72 million people are exposed to sound over the EPA’s safe limit. This project explores how architects and urban planners think about sound. It also explores the complexity of urban sound. Sound lets us know we are alive, it’s a marker of culture and mechanisms.
Challenge
The challenges of this project were primarily communicating sounds as an issue due to its abstractness. The scale of cityscapes was both an inhibitor and an opportunity. Redesigning or altering a cityscape in a meaningful way takes coordination and agreement of multiple deciding bodies. This also presents an opportunity to imagine new complex paradigms and disrupt the current paradigm through activism.
Outcome
The outcome of my research is the Urban Echo Podcast. Urban sound, in cities, is complex and warrants further discussion. For my final output, I decided to use sound as a medium to propel further discourse on sound, in cities. Guests include; architects, urban planners, and sound researchers. Urban Echo can be found on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Sticher.