.

Right now, the average daytime decibel level in Cairo is 85dbA, the equivalent of standing fifteen feet from a freight train. A freight train 15 hours long. Everyday. London is barely quieter.

This project imagines: A catastrophic event strikes without warning. As all internal combustion engines fail and the electrical grid goes from brown to black, a fast silence falls across the city.

This project considers simultaneously – the city as sound and catastrophe as a silencing. It questions: What will the city sound like? Is communication possible? As the noise floor drops, will a new soundscape emerge?

The project employs the soundtrack as the index for the urban sonic condition – before, during and after catastrophe. It takes the soundtracks of uncoventional and experimental films as points of departure to consider the sound of a post-catastrophe London.

Both architecture and cinema articulate lived space. These two art forms create and mediate comprehensive images of life. Both forms of art define the dimensions and essence of existential space; they both create experimential scenes of life situations.

Juhani Pallasmaa
Lived Space in Architecture and Cinema