Sound-Frameworks enables new methods to prioritise the role of sound as a driver within the design of the public realm. While methodologies for working with sound proliferate within large-scale transportation infrastructure impact assessment and cultural projects where music and live arts are a priority, techniques for activating the sound environment within the wider public realm are poorly understood and under-resourced, and thus rarely considered within larger-scale urban design initiatives. Consequently, the practices that shape the public realm remain ill-equipped to address sonic, acoustic and aural cues within their clients’ projects, as these modes of design lay outside of the ocularcentric modalities that dictate architectural and urban form. Sound-Frameworks draws together interdisciplinary urban design teams to determine what is required in order to integrate considerations of sound within urban design and city planning processes from an early stage. It facilitates approaching sound as an active resource through which to address the multisensory potential of the public realm.
Central to Sound-Frameworks’ objectives is an understanding that there is a difference between ‘working with sound’ and ‘working through sound’. Working through sound positions sound as an active driver for enabling new modes of design and urban transformation, as opposed to an environmental condition that requires mediation.
Sound-Frameworks empowers diverse professionals – from artists and architects to developers and community organisers – to develop a plurality of approaches that augment and extend emergent standards in this domain, such as the ISO Soundscape Standard (ISO 12913-1:2014, ISO/TS 12913-2:2018, ISO/TS 12913-3:2019 and ISO/AWI TS 12913-4).
Sound-Frameworks employs an interdisciplinary methodology that builds from artistic and practice-led research. This approach prioritises the integration of artists within urban design and planning initiatives and draws from the history of the artist placement, in which artistic practice is situated directly within the context of a host institution to generate unforeseen outcomes.