As fresh graduates in the field of architecture, and through our students’ life, the academic side of us has always been intrigued by the prospects of making public spaces more interactive. Public spaces are an ideal playground to explore, experiment with and understand the collective psyche of the society. It is here that the purpose of a city can take a comfortable and meaningful direction towards a more congenial cultural and social interaction with an idea of fun, relaxation and even self-education.

The public spaces are characteristic examples of bringing people, irrespective of their age, gender, caste, creed, religion, region and pragmatic purposes, into one common space to indulge in a state of rest from their otherwise hectic schedules. Here they may indulge in joy and fun, to put in simple words.

The idea of Soundscape design panels struck home as far as we are concerned, and opened possibilities for us to experiment with combining the "Vision" and "Sound" as participatory elements in designing of interacting elements in urban public spaces.

1) A step towards making public spaces (Parks, LSC, Plazas, Shopping Centers) more interactive

2) Combining visual and auditory faculties

3) Where people are engaged in something, which gives them pleasure and one such medium is music

a) The joy of listening to music.

b) The joy of making music.

We started with the process of understanding the basics of the production of sound, then acoustics and then the structure of music. To understand the panels of sound it is important to know the theory behind them. Let us start with our understanding of the basics and how they helped us evolve the design.

(I am putting them as notes, rather than a formal presentation)

To design such panels, lets understand the psyche behind it (the basics)

• Music is universal
• Music in terms of source and perception

Source (nature)----à preceptor (man)

• Music as a result of "movement" and "relationships"
• Movement (Sound)

This movement when mediated by volume and material produces sound.

• Relationship (understanding)

• As in any other phenomenon, where limitless and continuous elements like space and time are rationalized, structured by the human brain which desperately tries to find its way to be able to comprehend things, the continuous flow of sound is recognized in its basic parts as the "octave".
• These notes comprising the "octave" and the sub-notes when arranged in different relationships to each other render the sound with musical quality.

Man perceives sounds from nature and tries to setup relationships (as given above) and then tries to reproduce these. He does this and feels in harmony with nature, and this harmony gives him fun and joy (to put in simple words)

Musical instruments are man’s efforts to reproduce the music that he perceives from the source and enhance it

• The Musical Instruments as the "Mediators"

• The Panels in Action (mediating in the Soundscape environment)
• Passive Action: The sounds from the contextual Soundscape activate the mediators in the panel to produce sounds. The design and nature of these mediators (strings, pipes, metal sheets, etc.) will defer from context to context, depending upon whether it is to be located in proximity to a city street with automobiles or placed in a garden.
• Active Action: here the observer, the listener, the spectator becomes an active participant in the mediating process of the panel, and renders sound through the panel-turned-musical instrument.
• The Panels at Rest (mediating in the landscape environment)

• The designs can go a step further, and they can draw references from existing visual elements, which show these principles, e.g. analysis of paintings, sculptures, architecture and natural environment based on the setting in which the panel is going to be placed.

• VISUAL RHYTHM
• FORM AND SOUND

The visuals in the accompanying pages show, how visual and auditory faculties have been brought together. The panels though constraint by size and proportions have immense possibility for a participator to explore himself/herself with in this landscape/Soundscape environment.