Listening podcasting
Described by Liese Mertens with Ankit Kumar Singh (author of the practice), Based on fieldwork within Project LISTEN (Driving Urban Transitions Partnership, 2023–2026)Description
Design by Listening: Podcasting as Reflective design research
Context
Podcasting as Reflective design research was developed by Ankit Kumar Singh in the context of Project LISTEN (Belgium, Sweden, Austria). Presented as an experimental public format during Dag van de Wetenschap 2025, Hasselt. Participants include citizens, researchers and visitors engaging in collective sound-based reflection on everyday housing.
Description
Design by Listening explores podcasting as a participatory and reflective research tool within urban and housing contexts. In this retracing practice, recording and playback become moments of co-sensing: people listen together to sounds from their living environments and reflect on how these shape their experience of home and neighborhood.
The setup - four microphones, four headphones, and a shared table with notes and materials - creates a small-scale Listening Lab. Here, sound acts both as data and as prompt for dialogue. Participants are invited to record, respond and reinterpret what they hear, generating new stories and shared meanings around everyday sonic life.
Engagement with more-than-human entities
Through podcasting, environmental sounds - rain, traffic, ventilation, birds - are acknowledged as co-actors in shaping domestic experience. The practice values these sonic presences as part of the living environment, revealing how built and natural elements co-produce atmospheres of dwelling.
Interpretation as “retracing”
Podcasting here is understood as a retracing device, it makes audible what is usually unnoticed and allows for layered reflection.
Each recording and playback cycle revisits moments of listening, revealing how perception shifts over time. For Participatory Design, this demonstrates how data generation can become more situated, dialogical and temporal, integrating affect and memory rather than abstracting them.
Case study
During the Listening Lab on Day of science 2025, participants listened to sounds recorded in suburban homes - creaking floors, voices, street ambience - and shared how these resonated with their own experiences. Short podcast fragments were created collectively, forming an evolving “sound map” of how people hear housing.
References
ReWorlding. (n.d.). LISTEN – Projects page. Retrieved June 1, 2025, from https://reworlding.eu/projects/listen
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