Jacob Blankenship
SOUND STUDIES
Exploration of Natural Audio for the Use in Architectural Design
Thesis: As humans, we position ourselves in this world primarily through vision. This project focuses on the sense of hearing to help situate a person in reference to the audio queues in the natural environment.Positioning: The drive behind this project sits behind the fact that humans interact with this world predominantly on a visual level. Architecture specifically is an inherently visual practice. There have been steps towards understanding architecture through other senses such as touch through the in-depth research and understanding of differing materials. However, the sense that I am focusing on has been explored on a very rudimentary level in the form of noise reduction and reverberation. My goal with this project is to understand how we as humans can begin to understand our surroundings beyond the spectrum of visible light and into the realm of natural audio queues.My first experience began with a series of sketches for a structure that connected the occupant with its immediate audio surroundings. These series of sketches took the form of a tower aptly named, “Sound Tower.” This early investigation started to shine light on the possibilities that sound holds as a design element in a similar way that light and water may be used. Through this investigation it became clear that natural audio can be interpreted at many scales and at different focuses. Although this project situates itself in the realm of architectural design, these installations that have been produced for this project can be used to further investigate the ecological presence within a given location.This project seems to only have just started with this first phase being “How do we gather these audio queues” and leading into a second phase of “How can we then use this information and translate it into architectural design
