Warwick Bar Masterplan: lead artist

As lead-artists for Birmingham’s Warwick Bar urban development, ‘liminal’ were invited by MADE (Midlands Architecture and the Designed Environment) to work with Architects Kinetic AIU on the area’s masterplan, funded by the PROJECT fund overseen by CABE (Commission for the Built Environment) and A&B (Arts and Business).

We set out to explore how consideration of sound can inform approaches to urban design, planning, regeneration, and their surrounding discourses, and began by surveying the site from the perspective of sound. Planners’ and architects’ surveys traditionally focus primarily on topography, with some acknowledgement of social and historical context. Acoustical concerns are almost never addressed beyond utilitarian issues of noise limitation and isolation. Our survey began with the premise that soundscapes are important to urban geographies and that the development’s sustainability would depend on rigorous understanding of the site’s sonic character, history and potential for further intervention.

Our first outcome was a soundwalk commissioned for Birmingham ArtsFest (8th-9th September 2006). This considered how materials collected during making and sharing the walk might identify important soundmarks to be kept, enhanced or even reinstated, and might raise the status of sound to become a significant influence on project design overall.

• http://www.liminal.org.uk/warwick-bar-so...