Constructing Urban Space with Sounds and Music

While we are used to looking around us, we are less used to listening to what happens around us. And yet, the noises we produce reveal our way of life, and learning to master them is a necessity. This book aims at drawing the reader's attention to the sound of the urban environment. The topic is by its very nature complex, as it involves sounds and noises, urban space and social activities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, it examines a heterogeneous selection of experimentations from the domains of music, art and architecture. Significant case studies of pieces of music, public art works and scientific research in the field of urban planning are analyzed, investigating the methods that have been adopted and the aural processes that have been generated. It then uses the findings to reconstruct the underlying theories and practices and to show what might be drawn from these procedures applied to urban planning. The overall objective is to learn to build and enrich space with sound, arguing that there is a need to reconsider architecture and urban planning beyond building, and to look to the world of the arts and other disciplines. In doing so, the book guides the reader toward a sensorial architecture, and more generally toward consciously creating environmental architecture which is sustainable and connects with art and which diffuses a culture of sound.
About the Author: Ricciarda Belgiojoso is an architect and pianist. Adjunct Professor of Public Art and of Site Specific Public Art, she is the director of the Visual Arts and Communication Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture and Society in Politecnico di Milano. Her work focuses on art, architecture, music and their intersections. Dr Belgiojoso is a member of LabSAT, center for Design of Space and Time of the City, Department of Architecture and Urban Planning in Politecnico di Milano, and is one of the two directors of Osservatorio Public Art, an interdisciplinary research center for Public Art. Head of the contemporary music department of Radio Classica, she has written several books including Costruire con i suoni (Franco Angeli 2009; Construire l'espace urbain avec les sons, l'Harmattan 2010) and Note d'autore. A tu per tu con i compositori d'oggi (Postmediabooks, 2013).