What comes to your mind when thinking about the sounds in Helsinki? Is it the trams, seagulls, the wind or perhaps silence. The city is quite minimal in its sounds, a quality that makes it unique. However, this uniqueness sometimes leaves you yearning for more variety, volume and spontaneity. Here we take the opportunity to think about how to design a more interesting Helsinki from the sonic point of view.

1. Concrete music

In Helsinki courtyards are often reserved for household activities, like waste disposal or carpet beating. Other than that, they are mainly used for passing through. There are sounds that big bins make when they open and close and the clatter of steps when people walk home. However, inner yards could emit other, more cozier sounds as well.

If they featured more gardens, tables and chairs – places to meet and spend time in – there might be a hum of longer and shorter conversations, jingling of cutlery and plates and the sounds that gardening creates.

2. Avian melodies

Some clichés are true; birds’ singing makes most people happy and if Finns love nature, why not bring more of it to the city? If Helsinki were to have more trees and small parks everywhere, there would also be more rustling of leaves and songbirds of different kinds.

3. Metropolitan instruments

How do we make the most out of asphalt, the dominant flooring material of the city? We would like to hear more click-clacking of high-heeled shoes, tapping of canes used by the elderly people taking to the streets, rattling of skateboards and naturally, the sound of bikes skidding and braking. Maybe street fashion blogs, open-air dance floors or better city bikes will eventually turn the people of Helsinki into an orchestra.

4. Lingual mix

With Finnish and Swedish as the official languages, Helsinki is already a bilingual city and other languages such as Russian are being heard more and more every day. Bringing more ingredients into the mix through more open immigration policies and creating a babel of languages along with their accents, dialects, volumes, rhythms and intonations would make Helsinki sound more interesting.†

Text Anni Puolakka & Jenna Sutela / OK Do Illustration Nene Tsuboi

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OK Do is a creative think-and-do tank tackling emerging questions at the intersection of design, art and science. www.ok-do.eu

Tags:
äänimaisema, anni puolakka, city, finland, helsinki, jenna sutela, kaupunki, luonto, nature, nene tsuboi, ok do, sisäpiha, suomi