In her article ‘Rethinking the subject, reimagining worlds,’ Susan M. Ruddick adds to a growing body of geographical literature that adopts a neo-vitalist approach to the understanding of nature and the human subject. In this brief article we suggest that whilst Ruddick’s argument raises many interesting points it is nonetheless hampered by a limited engagement with the historiography of scientific metaphors and the wider ethical and political tensions engendered by a contemporary recourse to vitalist ontologies.

This paper extends the history of landscape design and urban green planning by discussing the work of landscape designers in West Berlin, who attempted to create 'sonic refugia' using trees, bushes and other plants for noise abatement purposes. It expands the narrow conceptions of landscape as a solely visual experience also to include the acoustic realm. Motivated by increasing concerns over the physiological and psychological effects of noise pollution, and drawing on late nineteenth and early twentieth century ideas of nature as a remedy for the negative effects of modern urban life, this paper places the work of landscape designers in the context of ongoing discourses on the intersections of urban nature and public health. Sonic experiments with plants of the 1960s not only draw our attention to the acoustic qualities of urban nature, but also open reflections on the wider historical, political and cultural contexts in which urban landscapes were experienced. Hereby, West Berlin's marginal spaces or terrains vagues, which emerged as accidental by-products of the island city's spatial confinement, were exemplary sites in their attempts to foreground the sensory experience of space.For just as there are plants that are said to confer the power to see into the future, so there are places that possess such a virtue. For the most part, they are deserted places-treetops that lean against walls, blind alleys or front gardens where no one ever stops.

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Existing geographical research on sound has largely focused on the relationship between music and place. The actual places of music-concert halls, opera houses, and other listening and performance spaces-have remained an empirical lacuna. Concert halls are influential agents over urban space. They are not only flashpoints of urban culture, they also technologically mold urban space and transform our acoustic experience of the city. In this article, I use the modern concert hall as a conceptual and empirical window on the world to examine the relationship between sound, modernity, and urban space. The Berlin Philharmonie, designed by the German architect Hans Scharoun and completed in 1963, is considered one of the most influential modern concert halls and a precursor to the currently prevalent vineyard-style design. It is suggested that Scharoun's radically democratic spatial design is significantly different from the contemporary boosterism of iconic halls and the widening scope of a late-modern economy of experiential intensity. A close reading of Scharoun's modernist experiments with sound in postwar Berlin highlights the underexplored theoretical and political tensions around what we might refer to as acoustic modernism.En lo que concierne al sonido, en gran medida la investigaci on geogr afica se ha centrado sobre la relaci on entre m usica y lugar. Los lugares reales asociados con m usica-salas de concierto, casas de la opera y otros escenarios para representaci on o de audici on musical-siguen siendo lagunas emp ıricas. Las salas de concierto son agentes que influyen el espacio urbano. No solo son puntos impulsores de la cultura urbana, sino que adem as moldean tecnol ogicamente el espacio y transforman nuestra experiencia ac ustica de la ciudad. En este art ıculo, uso la sala de conciertos moderna como ventana conceptual y emp ırica del mundo para examinar la relaci on entre sonido, modernidad y espacio urbano. La Berl ın Philharmonie, completada en 1963 con diseño del arquitecto alem an Hans Scharoun, se considera una de las modernas salas de concierto de mayor influencia, y una precursora del diseño de estilo viñedo prevalente en la actualidad. Se sugiere que el diseño espacial radicalmente democr atico de Scharoun es diferente en grado significativo de la forma de promover entusi asticamente la ciudad contempor anea, con escenarios ic onicos y la intensidad experiencial en el alcance expansivo de una econom ıa de modernismo tard ıo. Una lectura juiciosa de los experimentos modernistas de Scharoun con el sonido en el Berl ın de la posguerra destaca las tensiones te oricas y pol ıticas inexploradas que circundan lo que podr ıamos referir como modernismo ac ustico. Palabras clave: Berl ın, Hans Scharoun, modernismo ac ustico, m usica, sala de conciertos.But those who sit nearest to it [the dome], for a small sum of money, and at the furthest remove from the stage, know that the roof is not firmly fixed above them and wait to see whether it won't burst open one day and bring about that reunification of sta...

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