L'immagine sonora della città

The first woman cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova gave an interesting account of the perceptual experience she had in space saying that although she could enjoy a breathtaking view of the surrounding landscape the things she missed the most were the sounds of nature, especially the sound of the rain, similarly, in Tarkovskij’s film Solaris, the protagonist who lives in a space station places strips of silk paper in front of the fan to recreate the sound of the wind. These examples emphasize how sonic environment is important for memory and identity and how human beings recognize profound values and meanings in it. According to Justin Winkler in fact, soundscape “is not only outside of us – as we are used to think of it in our visually oriented culture– but it also includes a ‘landscape’ part, in the metaphorical sense, as an emotional or mnemonic landscape”. Nonetheless, most of the publications about sound tend to focus mainly on the technical and quantitative aspects related to acoustics and physics and miss out the importance of how sounds positively affect the environment. In light of the considerations shown above, the topic of the dissertation, which addresses soundscapes in contemporary city, belongs to the disciplinary fields of both Urban Design and Soundscape Studies. Within this research the key-word soundscape will be understood as all the sounds surrounding us as percepteme that is the object of perception related to a subject, this being different from the concept of sound field which instead indicates the sound space of an object. In detail, the dissertation verifies the potentialities that exist in designing soundscapes within the process of contemporary city renewal and reaches the following objectives: - promote a new Sensuous Urbanism which not only describes the morphology but also the character, the time and the atmospheres of places; which is able to design spaces where corporeity returns as a central element, hence collective multisensory spaces, capable of expanding the perception of day-to-day life, encouraging listening, calling forth a deeper receptiveness, preventing indifferent robot like behaviors, shaking anaesthetized bodies; - support the integration of Soundscape Studies within the disciplinary field of Urbanism especially in times where “barriers between different academic fields tend to rigidify again”; - promote a creative approach to the sonic environment in comparison with the defensive and reparative approach which is generally adopted when the sonic environment is considered only in light of its characteristics of criticality, that is when the soundscape is reduced to a mere problem of noise pollution; - verify how urban morphology acts upon soundscapes, with a deeper look at the ensuing semantic relationships: in fact the embracing, continuous and fluid sonic space clashes with the fixity and rigidity of those urban shapes designed according to rationalist and functionalist style, an unfortunate result of ideologies wanting to control and dominate human beings - no longer considered in their dignity and humanity - but reduced to passive and unaware subjects; - encourage eco-sustainable projects according to the European Regulations on noise pollution: in fact, if the quantitative approach to the sonic environment can appear reductive and misleading, it is also undeniable that the continuous and constant exposure to sources of noise pollution produces harmful effects on the individual’s physical and psychological health. The dissertation is organized in two parts. In the first part, I define the disciplinary fields. The research on the image of the city, with a deeper study of Kevin Lynch’s theoretical corpus which was created during the years he spent at MIT, allowed me to identify in the realm of Sensuous Urbanism the theoretical frame from which I want to expose the predominance of sight over the other senses; I also emphasize the importance of finding a holistic approach to the discipline of Urbanism, identifying the sonic dimension in particular as one of the possible paths leading to said objective (first chapter). I then define the second disciplinary field, that of Soundscape Studies, through a brief synthesis of the evolution of the concept of soundscape throughout the twentieth century, and analyzing the state of the art of theoretical researches – both completed and underway – which are considered more meaningful (second chapter). In the second part, I explore both soundscapes mapping tools and soundscapes design tools within the disciplinary fields mentioned above. I verify the possibilities of representing and mapping soundscapes, and I show the limits and criticalities of the quantitative approach, typical of the current Italian legislation and employed in traditional Italian acoustic planning through the tools of “acoustic maps” and “action plans”. I attempt to demonstrate the need to adopt a qualitative approach regarding the sonic environment, and how the concept of noise needs to be revisited from a cultural standpoint, rereading the history of music of the twentieth century and identifying in soundmaps a valuable operational tool to be integrated in the urban planner’s toolbox. I then describe the “tender sound map” of Florence: an example of soundmap for the city of Florence, which I conceived and developed from scratch, where the sonic environment is interpreted from an emotional standpoint (third chapter). In the fourth chapter, I first illustrate the peculiarities and limits I encountered while researching for soundscapes design projects within Soundscape Studies, notably a certain lack of design applications, and then I suggest some methodology proposing a review of “best case studies” from the disciplinary fields of history of architecture, urbanism, landscape architecture and dance theatre. The chapter ends with the description of the “sonic niche”: a design tool I conceived (and subsequently theorized) for the project Soundscapes Oltrarno, which I developed within the workshop Digital City Design MIT Firenze, during the year I spent at the City Design and Development Lab (CDD) of MIT as a Ph.D. visiting student. In the dissertation conclusion, I offer a methodological direction which encourages an integration of the soundscape studies within the discipline of Urbanism, and I propose the operational tools of “tender sound map” of Florence and “sonic niche” as a resource for a design process able to achieve the ideal synthesis in designing physical and acoustic space in contemporary city. The second volume of the dissertation is composed of two appendix: Appendix A collects all the interviews I did to Professor Michael Southworth, Peter Bosselmann, Larry Vale, Dennis Frenchman and Steve Carr; Appendix B collects materials from the Institute Archives & Special Collections of MIT.