Sonic Gathering Place: implementation of a biophilic soundscape design and its evaluation

The Sonic Gathering Place (SGP) is a prototype urban furniture installation that uses sound design to enhance the biophilic effects of plants. It uses field recordings from four different biomes in South-Eastern Australia mixed with plants that are representative of those biomes. The SGP has a circular seating structure comprising four integrated planter boxes, each with a single speaker. Nature-based field recordings play through the four-speaker array to create an immersive audio playback experience, though without masking the existing acoustic environment of the installation site. This paper focuses, as practice-led research, on the design process of the installation that encompasses four disciplinary approaches: soundscape design, biophilic design, field recording and urban furniture. Innovatively, it then reports a quantitative survey of the user’s experience of the SGP that hones understanding of human response to the design. Measured user-responses to the SGP, collected through a smartphone-based questionnaire, were overwhelmingly affirmative of the design, including a positive change in self-reported mood resulting from the visit to the SGP. These responses were observed with introduced sound levels set only marginally louder than sound levels that existed before the installation. The results signal a wider role that biophilic sound installations might play in urban landscape design.