Audio-Maps to Manage Moving Territories. Embedding Strategies of Musical Synchronization to Qualify Sensitive Areas of Urban Informality

Abstract

Informal settlements in some of our contemporary metropolis demand for the understanding of site-specific spatial practices related to the anthropological images (This concept intends to combine the mental map theory presented by Kevin Lynch in his book The Image of the City (1964), [6] with some of the principles of social anthropology included in Levi-Strauss' Anthropologie Structurale (1958)) that their inhabitants acknowledge as available urban spaces. In order to establish effective operations of architectural transformation and inclusion, the re-configuration in space and time for such congested environments happens according to fluid processes of adaptation and compaction, which are detectable among typical inhabiting behaviors. Permanence and history in informal settlements are accidental as quite often land appropriation and actions of micro-colonization develop in the form of self-generated non-linear performances. However, these sensitive areas assume the quality of urban thresholds between formal and informal morphologies, for which the bond between topography and sound design can play an important cognitive support, transforming architecture in a perceptive map for the construction of shared landscapes within the city. Informal and degraded urban contexts feature similar characteristics to the acoustic space theorized by McLuhan (Understanding Media. Routledge, London, 1969, [7]) in his idea of the “global village” (1969). The space of the acoustic transmission of information is horizontal, continuous and enfolding. The construction of shared imaginaries can only happen through subjective and spontaneous participation, according to temporal sequences that are simultaneous or convoluted. Within this framework of complexity, the map is the artistic operator that retains a condition of reciprocity between multiple sequences of mobile elements within the landscape, reproducing ambiences of harmonic meaning. audio-guides orientate the user towards expressivity and experimentation as a tool for recognition. Entropy in this research is not perceived as the domain of the unfathomed chaos but it is field of possibility for architecture to tune morphological ambitions and corporeal dynamics with greater efficacy and precision. Music in a new strategic relationship with topography invites to master design driven processes with new cognitive awareness. Recurrent frequencies in space and time, as a new generation of natural interfaces (Alexander in Note sulla sintesi della forma. Il Saggiatore, Milano, 1967, [1]) can be employed as active forms of sense making, assisting the immersion of people in not-yet-conceptualized places. The livability of a settlement can be implemented insisting on the relevant reversible and irreversible processes that allow the existence of its very physical structure. Music returns in this study to its original vocation of scientific ruler and actuator of complex processes of kinetic transformation of physical objects. A renewed musicality of the project is here investigated, with the aim of harmonizing such cycles with the geometric rhythm of a new urban prototype. “Architecture is conceived as a performing and dynamic action that stabilizes bioenergetics values between subject and object” (Formaggio in Estetica Tempo Progetto. Città Studio, Milano, 1990, [3]). From this point of view architecture is the primary instrument of environmental curatorship of people’s living environment. This study is a trans-disciplinary reflection on contingent problems related to moving and unstable territories and the most appropriate compositional techniques to map them. The main research question focuses on the possibility of defining the musicality of their irregular rhythm. Embracing an idea of a pulviscular architecture of inner forces and exchanging potentials (Formaggio in Estetica Tempo Progetto. Città Studio, Milano, 1990, [3]), immersive maps and audio-guide are organized following three stages of analysis and filtering. Recognition, nomination, and synchronization are the steps presented for the design process to manage the pace of the elements involved in the composition, contributing in the construction of an inhabitable and commutative geographical skin.