Happy Atmospheres. Metro Stations as Sound Places of Happiness (original) (raw)
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“ Ambiances ” in Railway Stations – The role played by acoustic
2015
Comfort has become a requirement, and is more or less well standardized. These standardized criteria have been able to reduce discomfort but do not always contribute to the well-being. The next step is to build an environment, which is appealing to our senses, emotions and memories. It is the ambiances/atmospheres of a station that we want to conceive. A review of the literature defined the main contributors, their interactions and their functions within a room. Acoustic has an important role to play in the design of the ambiance. The design of the sound environment should considered the architecture, the light and the equipment (lift, mechanical stairs, trains...). These are the components that will help writing the music sheet of the station. Defining the ambiance precisely still requires more understanding toward the relationship between perception and objective criteria.
Aural architecture practice : creative approaches for an ecology of affect
2019
While the acoustic environment and urban soundscapes shape our everyday life, architecture practice usually neglects the experience of acoustic space in its design process. My research addressed the challenge of integrating spatial acoustics and the experience of environmental sound in architecture practice. Drawing from acoustic ecology, creative approaches embody the aural experience of the environment into the design process of architecture. The research was guided by my explorations of a site-oriented aural architecture practice, to create unusual encounters and connections between human and non-human beings, for their relationship through the acoustic space. It experimented with the physical experience of vibrational forces in environmental sound, enhanced by acoustic resonance. The research was carried out by the creation of four artworks, employed as practical case studies, to experiment with concepts such as: resonant soundscape, space as resonator (Vibrational Fields), spac...
SHS Web of Conferences
The concept of “ambiance” has been shaped over the years by questioning the interactions between three attractors: architecture and the city, climatic and sound phenomena, uses and perception. Studied in pairs, each of these attractors refers to very different disciplinary fields; architecture and phenomena concern the physics of the city, architecture and uses interest sociology and uses and phenomena are rather turned to comfort. Studies concerning ambiances are therefore highly interdisciplinary and raise many questions: living spaces, urban renewal and heritage, urban prospective and the city as a stage. For this, many conceptual and technical tools are mobilized: digital tools for simulation and immersion, investigation, surveys and storytelling, prototyping, field action. What may be new in the field of academic studies is the awareness of artistic creation as a resource for the use of digital tools, storytelling and the representation of complexity through original means.
A sonic paradigm of urban ambiances?
2011
This paper intends to investigate urban ambiances through focusing on the world of sounds. Although the aesthetics of everyday life implies employing the whole human sensorium, making it difficult to artificially separate the information received from the individual senses from each other, I explore what can be learned about an ambiance when we just listen to it. In other words, how and under which conditions is it possible to develop a sonic paradigm of urban ambiances? The basic argument is to consider sound as a particularly efficient medium to investigate and develop an account of urban ambiances. Various ideas will be explored in order to answer this question, involving theoretical, epistemological and methodological arguments. Three main directions are accentuated: the first one relates to the tuning into an ambiance, the second relates to the unfolding of an ambiance, and the third relates to the situating within an ambiance. Urban spaces provide numerous ambiances to be felt with all the senses. Whether we think of a lively outdoor marketplace or an ordinary parking lot, an attractive historical center or an accessible subway station, the very way we relate to these places is based on the sensory experience they provide. It is a matter of light and colour, sound, smell, touch and heat, as well as the manner in which we walk and talk, move and look, relate and behave. In other words, urban ambiances always create a subtle interweaving of synaesthesia and kinaesthesia, a complex mixture of percepts and affects, a close relationship between sensations and expressions. To put it succinctly, an ambiance can be defined as a space-time qualified from a sensory point of view. It relates to the sensing and feeling of a place. Each ambiance involves a specific mood expressed in the material presence of things and embodied in the way of being city dwellers. Thus, ambiance is both subjective and objective: it involves the lived experience of people as well as
A quasi-experimental research on soundscape design and museum architectural space
Contemporary museums are in the front row of architectural experimentation concerning space and communication. One way to fabricate experience is through sensory design and specifically by exploring and redefining the sonic environment. In this quasi-experimental research, we design two different soundscapes in order to predefine the auditory experience in the context of architectural space. The study takes place in The State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki (Moni Lazariston), as part of the current exhibition "Composition-Construction-Production. The Russian Avant-Garde and Contemporary Art". The main hypothesis resolves around how visitors' experience and behavior varies, depending on the different soundscape creations. The research design involves three set of observations. The first set records visitors' behavior in its existing condition, the second one records visitors' behavior under the first experimental treatment and the third one records visitors' behavior under the second experimental treatment. The observations were made on six successive weeks; two for the existing condition, two for the first experimental treatment and two for the second one. The first experimental treatment condition, was designed to create a soundscape which was consisted of sonic effects like drones and cut outs, and it constituted mainly of sound samples of industrial, sci-fi and construction backgrounds. The main purpose of the new sonic environment was to reinforce the theme of the art exhibition by using sounds that are generally perceived as unpleasant. In addition the placing of the sound objects was carefully designed, aiming to alternate the prevailing visitors' route. The second experimental treatment condition, was designed to create a soundscape which was consisted of music compositions made during the Russian Avant-Garde period. The main purpose was to reinforce the theme of the exhibition through another perspective, which was generally perceived as pleasant. The results show that visitors had distinctive responses to different sonic environments and that soundscape design can be used as a tool to create desired architectural intervention.
City Sound & Emotion: The City Understood as an Emotional Scenario from the Perspective of Sound
2019
This workshop is the result of a practice-based research, which explored several interrelated elements: first the theory of Psychogeography, applied to the creative representation of urban environments from a multilayered approach and from an emotional and psychological perspective; second, the exploration of sound and acoustic theory, as research tools and artistic possibilities, directed towards the analysis of public space, its documentation and understanding in relation to processes of identity, intangible patrimony and storytelling. And finally, an experimentation and technical research related to audio postproduction, real-time data processing and interactivity. This exploration lead altogether to the design of a persuasive experience that sought to communicate the research outcomes to a broader audience by means of an experimental performance and sound installation presented initially in several cities in the north of Europe.
The backstage of urban ambiances
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2015
In this paper, I propose to explore a new way of designing and experimenting with the city. How are we to conceptualize the changes in contemporary cities on the basis of their ambiances? What about the sensory and emotional production of urban territories? What happens when our aim is no longer just to design space but also to install an atmosphere? Such questions are situated at the intersection of issues of a social, aesthetic, urban, ecological and political nature. I should like to advance a hypothesis: we are currently witnessing what I call the 'setting of ambiance' in urban spaces. To give an account of this phenomenon, I do not intend to offer a formal definition of what an ambiance may be, but rather to show from what it proceeds, on what it is based, what it produces and transforms in urban life. Several ambiance operating modes in the province of urban design will be the focus: establishing the sensory as a field of action, composing with affective tonalities, giving consistency to urban situations, maintaining spaces over time and playing with imperceptible transformations.
The sound heritage of a new town : ambiance's shocks in contemporary urbanism
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), 2009
How does the sound heritage of a recent urbanization form? We would like to highlight the various processes involved in constituting the environment of a great urban area : how old and new sounds, specific effects due to the natural environment and the particular sound output of the population or infrastructure (roads, railways, industry) combine and leave a mark on the place. One of the principal result of our investigation is that contemporary urbanism creates what we call ambiance shocks. The research (that was carried out in 2008) focused on the new town of Isle d'Abeau, near Lyon, France, which was built in the 1970s. This urban area stretches over 20 kilometres beside the Lyon-Grenoble motorway. The conurbation was designed as an archipelago of built islands in a natural landscape and around old villages. Various urban and architectural forms have taken root in this gently rolling landscape, beside the motorway that runs along the valley bottom. Our aim was to use sounds to explore the sensory identity of this type of new town and to identify options for change in order to give developers a greater awareness of dimensions that are difficult to represent. The study of ambiance shocks, would be then a paradigm to understand the sonic experience of this kind of contemporary urbanism and to find different solutions to integrate or resulve these conflicts in urban design.
2019
One of the most important research field to enhance the environment is ”soundscape” that concentrates on urban and indoor sound environments, with a focus on improving the quality and pleasantness. The ability of designing sustainable soundscapes and the necessity of it, have led to a new discussion in standardization of soundscapes. Most of the detailed work of the working group on perceptual assessment of soundscape (ISO/TC 43/SCI/WG 54) focuses on soundscape quality, analysis methods and parameters on open public spaces. However, indoor soundscaping, which is a more recent research topic is as important as the urban soundscape because people spend 80% of their time indoors. Therefore, its standardization and application in the architectural design process is very crucial to improve indoor soundscape quality. In this study, present policies and applications about noise management and soundscape are assessed and international regulations are compared. In addition, deficiencies in b...