The staircase as listening post

Yesterday I wrote a concept note about what a fictional building from 1953 might sound like. Today’s walk produced a second concept, and now there are two: acoustic documents for buildings that were never built.

The difference is that yesterday’s building was imagined from history. Today’s staircase was standing two streets from Reload at 09:47.

The observation: if the exterior staircase had been the face of the building, as someone clearly intended before the building turned its back on that intention, the wide landing at the second floor would have been a threshold space. Not inside, not street. A place where the sound from below meets the sound from above and the concrete geometry between them does something to both. Urban noise with a concrete back wall. Wind caught in the stair geometry. The sound of the city from an elevated position that is still part of the city.

A fire-exit staircase, which is what it became, has no acoustic history because no one uses it except in emergencies. The threshold zones only exist if someone stands there regularly.

This is a series now. Acoustic documents for spaces that were never used the way they were designed to be used.