Breaking the Sound Barrier

Designing event space for a quiet city.

Outdoor events face barriers - How can we design flexible spaces that accommodate loudness and other disruption for a variety of cultural activations?

Vancouver has a number of outdoor/public spaces that are multipurpose throughout the year, with a primary function being public passive use, and transformed to Special Event Festivals, Markets, and/or Cultural Gatherings. When transforming these spaces: event producers and organizers often have to fully transform these spaces bringing in all of their own infrastructure.

Event organizers also routinely face pushback for potential neighbourhood disruption. Part of this is related to resident tolerance levels for sound, light, traffic and lateness, and how these impacts are considered within permitting processes. While some existing events are able to continue on without issues, new, unfamiliar events can face significant barriers. Organizers often work around these concerns by producing new events outside of the city boundaries.

How can we design effective, flexible outdoor spaces with built in elements for use from night to day, winter to summer, loud to contemplative, etc. How might this shorten the path from our cities artistic ideas to our cities artistic and cultural events. We’ll think about what producers need to make it easier to set up their events, infrastructure or services for attendees and how to manage impacts to surrounding neighbourhood residents.

Might designing and designating spaces for 24 hour noise and light increase tolerance for new cultural offerings in a city that’s craving vibrancy?