Sound-Frameworks: From Practice to Research to Practice

Sound-Frameworks: Collaborative Frameworks for Integrating Sound Within Urban Design and Planning Processes is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship that explores how to assert critical considerations of sonic experience within the design of the public realm. The project addresses limitations with current modes of knowledge exchange between stakeholders involved in working with sound in the context of the built environment. Sound-Frameworks accelerates an action-led research agenda through the development of three interrelated resources. Through the development of these resources, the project integrates opinions from diverse professionals, from architects to acousticians, from planners to artists and from activists to developers, inviting the perspectives of students and younger professionals alongside established practitioners. By foregrounding opportunities for practitioners to reflect on their own definitions of ‘the public realm’ and ‘working with sound’, the project steers away from homogenised conceptualisations of this domain of design. To support this, the project leverages practical resources - such as the The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Work - to explore how different modes of working with sound in the context of the public realm occur across different stages of project development. This poster outlines the project’s structure, objectives, core partnerships and initial research findings and explores how they will inform the production of the Sound-Frameworks design tool, foregrounding an agile momentum from practice to research and back to practice again.