Place des Fleurs-de-Macadam

PLACE DES FLEURS-DE-MACADAM, CANADA

Place des Fleurs-de-Macadam is a public space in a well-planned, dense urban area located at Avenue de Mont-Royal Est, in Montreal, which temporarily hosted sound installation art between 2018 and 2019. The project was a cross-sector collaboration between the local authority Plateau-Mont-Royal, Borough of the City of Montreal, the Castor et Pollux landscape company, the sound design firm Audiotopie and the Sounds in the City research team. It was directed towards a diverse audience, including residents, tourists, workers, students etc.

Close up of one of the sound installation speakers.

Woodlands. Composer: Lou Duchemin-Lenquette, with a mix of natural sounds and musical tones to foster relaxation. 2018, © Audiotopie

Voices. Composer: Étienne Legast, includes human voices to foster social interactions. 2018, © Audiotopie

Seascape. Composer: Simone D’Ambrosio, backgrounded composition with a focus on sea sound. 2019, © Audiotopie

Synthesizer. Composer: Simone D’Ambrosio, foreground composition with a focus on abstract, musical tones. 2019 © Audiotopie.

Summer 2018

CONTEXT

The previously vacant lot was dominated by traffic noise. Initiated by the city, the space underwent several temporary layouts with different ammenities and specific vocations, see [4]. To improve the soundscape, Audiotopie deployed four temporary sound installations over the course of the summers 2018 and 2019 (two installations each summer). The sound installations were intended to foster the space's intended vocations, e.g. relaxing or social interaction.

INTERVENTION STRATEGIES

Each sound installation had different purposes to foster the different designs' vocations, with a mix of musical sounds and various types of sounds. For instance, one used natural sounds to foster relaxation while another used voice sounds to foster social interactions. In addition the goal was to increase space users' awareness of their sound environments and bring variety in the existing soundscape, dominated by traffic noise.

Fall 2018

Assesment

The Sound in the City team deployed around a thousand questionnaires with space users (in presence and absence of the sound installations) to evaluate the impact of the sound installations on the public space's soundscape, but also to inform both 2019 installations' composition using results from 2018.

Fall 2019

Observations

Results show that each sound installations benefited soundscape evaluations when compared to control conditions. Further, changes in soundscape ratings were related to the compositions so that the sound installations effectively reinforced the different vocations of the space. Otherwise, the added sounds distracted participants from other sound sources, including traffic noise and construction noise. Finally, an effect of contextual parameters (location of users and presence of construciton works) on the reception of the installations was observed.

References

[1] Guastavino, C., Fraisse, V., D’Ambrosio, S., Legast, É., & Lavoie, M. (2021). “Designing sound installations in public spaces: A collaborative research creation approach.” In M. Filimowicz (Ed.), Designing interactions for music and sound, Routledge.

[2] Steele, D., Legast, É., Trudeau, C., Fraisse, V., Guastavino, C. “Sounds in the City: Enhancing the Soundscape of a Public Space through Sound Art.” In International Congress on Sound and Vibration. Montreal, Canada, 2019.

[3] Fraisse, V., Steele, D., D’Ambrosio, S., Guastavino, C. “Shaping Urban Soundscapes through Sound Art: A Case Study in a Public Square Exposed to Construction Noise.” In International Workshop on Haptic and Audio Interaction Design. Montreal, Canada, 2020. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02901201.

[4] Place des Fleurs-de-Macadam. Castor et Pollux. Paysage et Design Urbain. http://castoretpollux.co/. Retrieved: 21th February 2024 from http://castoretpollux.co/portfolio/place-fleurs-de-macadam-2/.

Photos: Valérian Fraisse
Sounds: Audiotopie
Entry submitted by: Valérian Fraisse