“We depend on understanding how two events within a city are combined to make a living sequence, and we depend on understanding how men have lived in the city we inhabit, and we depend on understanding how we can get from place to place in the city. Each at its own level contributes to our ability to know and enjoy the experience—social, temporal and spatial linkage”... “Linkage is simply the glue of the city. It is the act by which we unite all the layers of activity and resulting physical form in the city”.
“Investigations in Collective Form. The City as a Pattern of Events”. (1964). Fumihiko Maki. 1993 Pritzker Award.
Cities are going through a moment of change, a non-return disruption. The end of the era of the traditional fuel car and the offspring of new ways of mobility, geared up together with the boost in ubiquitous communication will definitely change the way we experiment cities as we know them today. Furthermore, the border between the built and natural environment is no longer perceivable, and we have to get used to understanding the world as a whole only being with different levels of anthropicity that we have the responsibility to take care of.
The invisible global attack of the COVID-19 virus triggered a terrifying impact on human society and economy. We learned that Intangible actors can generate measurable outcomes in the most solid foundations of our structures. Sound waves are an important matter in the manufacturing of the perceptual feeling of our cities, and a key indicator of pollution, quality of life and speed/reach of transformations.
Sound acts as a linkage, a glue, a pinner through layers, but it´s not the only one. Design software is organised by layers. Sound design software overlaps layers of audio, 2D design overlaps layers of graphics and 3D design overlaps layers of 3D compounds. Data today is organised by layers and so it is our understanding of the world.
A city is composed by layers. Layers of tangible and Intangible activity. Understanding the interaction of these layers is key to monitor, test and validate scenarios for the cities of the future.
