Sound of Old Anarkali
Sep 11, 2022, 03:20 PM
"Old Anarkali has been a bustling market in the city of Lahore for at least 200 years. Owing to its rich history, the market still holds much of the historic architecture at its backside while the front has been modernised, catering to the commercial needs. These buildings are mostly residential and while their material condition is in decay, the intangible environment has a strong 'sense of the past'.
"As an undergraduate architecture student, I visited Old Anarkali in 2019 in search of remnants of the past and found the sonic elements to be the most prominent in the creation of the 'sense of the past'. I recorded at 14 different spots in the neighbourhood and edited them to remove sounds that were not there in the past i.e; motor sounds, traffic noise. This approach left me with sounds of horse trotting, leather shoe steps on gravel pathways, sounds from an old church, pigeons cooing, children playing. Finally I combined the latter sounds into a 40 second audio as a palette that can always potentially create a sonic environment similar to the times gone by.
"The resultant audio sounds like a melody, where all the sounds merge together in harmony and transport you to a calmer place. This idea inspired me to create architecture that materialises that calm sense by amplifying low frequency sounds and buffering outside, traffic noise."
Composition by Sania Ahmad.
"As an undergraduate architecture student, I visited Old Anarkali in 2019 in search of remnants of the past and found the sonic elements to be the most prominent in the creation of the 'sense of the past'. I recorded at 14 different spots in the neighbourhood and edited them to remove sounds that were not there in the past i.e; motor sounds, traffic noise. This approach left me with sounds of horse trotting, leather shoe steps on gravel pathways, sounds from an old church, pigeons cooing, children playing. Finally I combined the latter sounds into a 40 second audio as a palette that can always potentially create a sonic environment similar to the times gone by.
"The resultant audio sounds like a melody, where all the sounds merge together in harmony and transport you to a calmer place. This idea inspired me to create architecture that materialises that calm sense by amplifying low frequency sounds and buffering outside, traffic noise."
Composition by Sania Ahmad.