Rethinking Urban Landscapes: Sensory Mapping with Dr Victoria Marshall

The NUS Baba House was delighted to have Dr Victoria Jane Marshall lead and participate in a sensory mapping workshop for our docents as part of their training for their upcoming neighbourhood tours around the Blair Plain Conservation District. She is a senior lecturer and Director of the Master of Landscape Architecture programme at the Department of Architecture, NUS.

The group of 10, which included Baba House’s adult docents and its new batch of student docents, conducted the activity in two parts following Dr Victoria’s directions: the first getting them to take an area of the Blair Plain neighbourhood and recording or responding to any sounds they encountered, and the second where they transcribed the sounds onto a map through gestures, marks and text.

The activity was a departure from the typical visually dominant approaches to observing urban landscape, prompting participants to rely on other sensations, in this case sound, to carefully observe and map their surroundings. Being an area full of colourful shophouses often demanding one’s visual attention, Dr Victoria’s workshop helped our docents discover new characteristics about the neighbourhood by encouraging them to carefully sense their surroundings. As the participants noted, the variety of sounds recorded reflected the diversity of people, animals and even changes in physical landscape which were often overlooked in their initial encounters with the area.

As representatives of NUS Baba House, this activity was crucial for helping our docents create a more critical and holistic picture of the area which we hope they will integrate into their tours in the future. The activity was not only thoroughly enjoyable but is an excellent example of how Baba House works closely with other NUS departments such as the Department of Architecture to enhance the learning of our docents and stakeholders whilst encouraging them to be active generators of knowledge and critical thinking.

Baba House hopes that in the future, we will be able to work with Dr Victoria again for more, similar activities which encourages not only our docents, but other public participants, to take time to observe their built environment and approach it in new ways.

We thank Dr Victoria once again as well as her assistants Radhakrishnan Srivarshini and Zhou Yaru for helping to coordinate and prepare for this workshop.

This article was contributed by Summer Chiuh, NUS Baba House.