This research examines how post-digital design and emerging technologies are reshaping the architectural soundscape, exploring the cultural and sensory implications of the Fourth Industrial Revolution on built environments.
Summary
Rooted in R. Murray Schafer’s seminal work on soundscapes, this research examines how the fourth industrial revolution—through robotics, AI, biotechnology, and innovative materials—is transforming our acoustic environments. As architecture enters a post-digital phase, the shift from bits to neurons influences not only how we design spaces, but also how those spaces sound and feel. The project explores the relationship between design processes and the sonic dimension of architecture, questioning whether we passively inhabit these evolving soundscapes or actively compose them. It aims to rethink the acoustic ecology of contemporary architecture through speculative, interdisciplinary research.
“Is the soundscape of the world an indeterminate composition over which we have no control, or are we its composers and performers, responsible for giving it form and beauty?” R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World, Knopf, 1977
In the 1970s, R. Murray Schafer identified the first industrial revolution as a turning point that radically changed both the quality and perception of the soundscape. The transition from high-fidelity to low-fidelity environments, driven by industrial noise and overlapping auditory signals, has a profound impact on the way humans engage with everyday sounds. As Schafer and later William Gaver emphasised, this sensory overload disrupted our ability to meaningfully connect with the sonic dimensions of the built world.
Forty years later, we are in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution (Schwab 2017), which is once again reshaping our environment—this time through robotics, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and the Internet of Things. These technologies are no longer separate from design but are fully integrated into the processes of architectural production. This transformation marks a shift from digital to post-digital architecture, where the focus moves beyond material computation (from bits to atoms) to the cognitive and perceptual interfaces of the human mind (from bits to neurons) (Carpo 2018).
In this new paradigm, the objects we design and build influence not only space and materiality but also the evolving soundscape of contemporary life. Architecture becomes a mediator of acoustic experience, demanding new forms of responsibility and creativity.
This research line explores how architecture can respond to and shape the emerging sonic conditions of the post-digital era.
