Abstract
Within the field of life sciences, the recent definition of “Soundscape” has been developed into a theory that determined a change of perspective in understanding and shaping the world in relation to different disciplines. The implementation of the soundscape theory within the landscape architecture practice is the object of a number of current researches. These studies focus on overcoming the former approach, based on noise abatement, and exploring the new perspectives introduced by the soundscape theoretical shift through the elaboration of the Soundscape Approach. Within this context, there is the necessity to broaden the designers’ view in addressing the sonic environment through landscape architecture interventions on the basis of the new Soundscape Approach, a challenge becoming more and more urgent in our fast developing world. This thesis aims to contribute to these researches exploring the soundscape design process in relation to Valletta urban soundscape. Within the European scene, the Maltese population resulted to be the most distressed by the urban sound environment. This sound issue becomes particularly interesting in Valletta, the city of “Yells, smells and bells” (Lord Byron), where the eclectic Mediterranean soundscape and the “noise” of the modernization coexist within a dynamic and fast developing urban scene. Despite the urgency of the problem, the nature of the Maltese soundscape issue still needs to be uncovered and addressed by concrete solutions. Designing for improving the quality of this peculiar soundscape represents an opportunity to test the implementation of the newly elaborated Soundscape Approach for the design of the urban landscapes. Accordingly, the Soundscape of Valletta is defined by qualitative research through the perception of local people. In this context, the issue related to the decreasing acoustic quality of the city environment is introduced as a consequence of the gentrification process that causes the shift of Valletta soundscape from a Hi-Fi to a Lo-Fi condition and the loss of its sound-marks. Besides these results, the design process takes into account the sound preferences of residents as well as preconditions and difficulties related to the implementation of a soundscape intervention within the city landscape. The resulting design consists of multiple soundscape interventions aiming to improve the overall city sound environment along with the economic development and urban regeneration that the city is facing. This design solution also aims to show the benefits and conveniences of designerly addressing the soundscape dimension within urban contexts.
