Southampton

'Soundscape'

Queens Park in Southampton had its high point in the heyday of Southampton's Port when it was a magnet for people passing through the town to join a ship and for businesses serving the local economy.  But the area round the park has changed, meaning that use of the park has changed radically; it is now primarily used as a through route for commuters and, in general, merely as a conduit rather than a space to be enjoyed, as it is also blighted by noise from road traffic.  The City Council would like to see the park regenerated and become a better link between different parts of the City. 

The project aimed to review how the local community might be attracted to make better use of the park.  There were two parts to the exercise; around fifty brightly coloured chairs were borrowed from the local IKEA store, which park users were encouraged to take to different parts of the park - to understand how they might use the space if there were to be some permanent feature there. The second element was a unique sound experiment conducted by the University's Sound Engineering department.  'Sound Zones' were created in different parts of the park which reproducing for example football games, a water feature, a café, street theatre, birdsong and children's playground.  Users were able to move a chair to where they felt the sound was most conducive to what they felt they might want to use the park for.

Students observed how people used the park and recorded their reactions via interviews and questionnaires to feed into the local authority thinking around a framework for the planned redevelopment of the park.