Studio_ L28: From a Socially Engaged Sound Art Practice to an Open Training Ground for Sonic Design Experimentation

This paper reflects the preliminary findings of a PhD research on the spatial politics and potentials of noise and vibration, and the affective or attractive and repulsive power of sonic force. We focus on the public space of a railway area in transformation in Brussels, where sonic conflicts are prevalent. To explore the affordances of a sonic urbanism as critical spatial practice and thus to break free from prevailing modes of urbanism which focus on sonic risk and vibrational nuisance − we constitute a working practice exploiting and nurturing the productive encounters between disciplines such as sound art, urbanism and urban architecture. By setting up an experimental design studio at the KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, embedded in local auditory culture and in connection to ongoing planning processes, we aimed to facilitate an open learning ground for sonic design experimentation in the development of innovative sonic spatial tools and approaches. The studio was oriented to students of the International Master in Architecture summoned to research the multiple (sonic) vibrations of the L28 railway area, to exploit and contrast these vibrational forces, transforming them to into actions and opportunities. From a critical sonic understanding of urban space, students played and explored a contradictory role compared to the widespread noise control practices, reformulated environments, perimeters and relations of urban phenomena and searched for interactivity with vibrational dynamics that already exist in the territory.