The jury for the 17th edition of the Mário Quartin Graça Scientific Award selected Cristiano Pacheco as the winner for his thesis ‘Os Sons do Espaço Público e da Arquitetura na Sociedade da Sonorização Ativa’, developed under the ‘Cities and Urban Cultures’ Doctoral Programme (CES/FEUC) and supervised by Paulo Peixoto and Rogério Proença.

This research examined urban listening, specifically how soundscapes and city life shape one another. It compares two neighbourhoods, Aruana in Aracaju (Brazil) and Solum in Coimbra (Portugal), to demonstrate that sound is not merely a backdrop, but an active element in the production of social space, one that holds affections, conflicts, forms of resistance and collective memories. In Aruana, listening is intense and laden with political and emotional significance, whilst in Solum, linked to university life and heritage, it is more subdued.

The research critiques the predominance of the visual in urban planning and proposes ‘active sonorization’ - the deliberate introduction of sounds into public spaces - as a tool for imbuing places with new meanings and encouraging citizen participation. It combines sound walks, sensory ethnography, acoustic mapping and surveys, resulting in a replicable methodological model. It argues that acoustic planning should not be limited to reducing noise, but should use listening as a means of diagnosis, mediation and intervention, because cities should be designed for the ears and not just for the eyes.

The Mário Quartin Graça Scientific Award is granted annually to a doctoral thesis in the Social Sciences and Humanities written by a student who has completed their postgraduate studies at a university in an Iberian country, Latin America or the United States of America, within the scope of the topics mentioned above, and is worth 5,000,000 euros. It is a Casa da América Latina initiative.

_21.09.2026