The Evolution of the Urban Sonotope

Sonotope: ”sono-” (sound) + ”-topos” (place)

The Industrial Revolution transformed not only technology but the way we experience sound. Factories, steam engines, and railways filled the air with clanging metal, hissing steam, and rhythmic chugging, pushing natural sounds like birdsong and flowing water into the background. As cities grew, the noise of traffic, and construction layered over these mechanical sounds, creating a dense and restless urban soundscape.

Urban sonotopes have since evolved further. While bustling traffic and human activity dominate, parks and green spaces offer zones where more ‘natural’ and human sounds blend in. Today, the transition to electric motors is softening some urban noises while introducing unfamiliar ones, reshaping the auditory texture of cities yet again. What sonic identities are being formed today? What does a city sound like when it begins to quiet down –or when new sounds take root?

At Lövholmen, or in any place shaped by fire, sonotopes change in an even more rapid way. What happens when fire touches a landscape, building, neighbourhood or a whole city? How does the sonotope change in the absence of what once was? What does it mean to listen to silence, to ruins, to spaces that have been stripped of their familiar sounds? What new sounds emerge –what voices return first, and which ones never come back?

How do we tune in to these shifts? Do we hear loss or opportunity, destruction or renewal? What do these transformed sonotopes reveal to those who stop and listen?

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It is an August day 2024. We are at Slotshlomen i Copenhagen. Standing just outside of the plot of the burned down former ‘Copenhagen Stock Exchange’ - Børsen. The weather is warn although windy (-not the perfect conditions for a fieldrecording). The building burned halfway down just 1,5 weeks ago, including the dragespir -dragon spire. From this point of view you can glimpse a look into the building and the scorched interior that’s left under the collapsed roof. The remaining walls, on this end of the building, are held up with the help of scaffolding and a number of empty containers. On the other side of the building from where we stand, is the road leading from the city center to Christianshavn and Amager, these days blocked to make room for the fire sanitation work. It is (now) around midday, and the construction workers on the site are on their way to their lunch break.

This is a recording of the transformed sonotope of Børsen in Copenhagen, as it stands in the aftermath of the fire.