Workshop

The Trembling City: Sound and Spatial Justice

*Energies of Collapse* (2026) by Gloria Jurado. Commissioned by the SONCITIES project.

Date and Time:: Friday 12 June, 2–5pm

Friday 19 June, 10am–1pm and 3–5pm
Location:: Sofra and Minassa

The Trembling City: Sound and Spatial Justice is a series of workshops and public programme conceptualised by sonic theorist Gascia Ouzounian with Ibraaz as part of the Sonorous Cities project.

The series explores diverse approaches to sound and spatial justice—from the sonic counter-mapping of cities to experimental scoring and recording practices to sonic refuge and staging sonic resistance. Starting with the workshops, participants will create speculative designs, sonic maps, recordings, and scores that engage with questions of audibility, access, power, and resistance in urban space.

A public programme consisting of a roundtable, listening session, and book launch of Ouzounian's The Trembling City will also take place at Ibraaz in the coming months.

Expressions of Interest

To participate in the workshops, please submit the following to soncitiesproject@gmail.com

- Name and contact details

- The name of the workshop(s) you are interested in attending.

- A short statement (around 50–100 words) describing your interest and motivations for attending. If relevant, please also include details of your research or creative practice background.

Please send your expression of interest by June 7. Successful applicants will be notified by June 9.

Workshop Schedule

Countermapping the Sonic City

Friday 12 June, 2–5pm
Led by Diana Ibáñez López and Gascia Ouzounian
This workshop introduces sonic counter-mapping as a method for documenting and challenging dominant representations of urban space. Through listening exercises and mapping practices, participants will produce alternative sonic maps that foreground overlooked or suppressed sonic cultures, histories, and spatial inequalities. The workshop will include discussion of existing sound maps, engagement with sonic archives, guided sketching and mapping exercises, and collective reflection.

Tactical Sonic Urbanism: Scoring Resistance

Friday 12 June, 10am–1pm
Led by Mhamad Safa and Gascia Ouzounian
This workshop focuses on experimental scores—graphic, textual, or instructional—as tools for staging sonic resistance in urban space. Participants will create their own scores designed to intervene in everyday sound environments, drawing attention to structures of power, surveillance, and exclusion. Emphasising sound as action, the workshop proposes performative and tactical approaches to reimagining and reconfiguring the sonic city.

Recording Architecture: Material Listening

Friday 19 June, 3–5pm
Led by Gerard Gormley
This workshop investigates vibrational listening as a tactile mode of engaging with sound through physical matter. Using transducers, resonant surfaces, and modular processing tools, participants will explore how vibration animates material environments and can be shaped into complex sonic textures. Combining hands-on experimentation with reflection, the workshop considers compositional and spatial strategies for working with sonic materiality.

The Sonorous Cities project is based at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. It is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant no. 865032).

Dr Gascia Ouzounian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, where she leads the ERC-funded project Sonorous Cities. Her work explores the intersections of sound, architecture, urbanism, and spatial politics. She is the author of Stereophonica and the forthcoming The Trembling City, and has led numerous collaborative research and exhibition projects including Acoustic Cities: London & Beirut, Scoring the City, and Designing Vibrational Architectures.

Diana Ibáñez López is an urbanist working at the intersections of spatial practice, policy, and design strategy. They are Course Leader of MA Cities at Central Saint Martins, where they develop city-making practices centred on social and climate justice. Their work includes public realm commissions, participatory planning initiatives, and exhibitions including Lived in Architecture at the RIBA.

Dr Mhamad Safa is a sound artist, architect, and researcher based between London and Beirut whose work explores the intersection of multi-scalar spatial conditions and their sonic formations. He is an Associate Lecturer in Architecture and Media Studies at the Royal College of Art, and his artistic practice has been presented internationally at venues including Bergen Assembly, Göteborg Biennial, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, and the ICA London.

Dr Gerard Gormley is Associate Professor of Music at Buckinghamshire New University, and a sound artist whose work explores the acoustic and vibrational properties of architecture and urban environments. His practice combines field recording, composition, and spatial listening to investigate the sensory dimensions of built space. His albums include Concrete Dreams of Sound, a sonic and vibrational study of the Barbican Estate in London.

The Sonorous Cities project is a six-year ERC-funded research project based at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford that investigates the relationships between sound, listening, architecture, and urban life. Through research, public programmes, exhibitions, workshops, publications, and artistic commissions, Sonorous Cities advances new approaches to sonic urbanism and sonic spatial justice.