Yuanrong Ma
M.Arch Thesis Spring 2011
Faculty Advisor: Stan Allen
Project Title: “NOISCAPE: A New Typology of Fountain”
As a marginal architecture, urban fountains evolved from municipal hygiene infrastructure into a key element for public open spaces, where the design is generally devoted to visual spectacularity. The acoustical dimension however has been a largely overlooked Deaf Spot - the natural white noise of water is a by-product of fountains in our ocular-centric culture. Taking a sensorial approach to urbanism, this thesis reinvents the typology of fountain as soniferous Noiscape, which attempts to construct Soundmarks for a new type of urban environments and engage the city through an acoustical device. Tested on a linear site, the hypothetical project is conceived as an instumentalized landscape installed with differentiated architectural acoustiques from the catalogue. The prototype of iterations is an inverted fountain Anish-Kapoor-ing the topography - gravitational movements of water excite the Natural Frequencies of resonating cavities, thus biasing flat white noise to coordinate the soundscape of urban context. The visual expressions articulate respective aural experiences and in parallel the Form Follows Frequency.
