Soundscapes and Architecture — a New Love Affair or a Long-Term Relationship? Part I
Published by Emilie under αρχιτεκτονική, μουσική, περιβάλλον, soundscape, World Listening Project on Τετάρτη, Απριλίου 03, 2013
Taking
a cue from fellow blogger Joseph Young and his blog posts about the 100th anniversary of
Noises Manifesto, the words of Luigi Russolo about the great modern
city came to my mind. According to Russolo, the city was characterized mainly
by the sounds of the machine, as he was always in search of the music in
technology as a true futurist that he was.
My
curiosity about connections between sound and architecture made me take a
different path, so I researched musicians who have taken an interest in the
city and architecture as a source of inspiration. Iannis Xenakis was
a genius who used his personal memories of crowd, demonstrations and battles
that took place in the city of Athens, during the German occupation in the
Second World War, as a row music material, a true war soundscape. Using his own
words “The whole world has observed the
sonic phenomena regarding a large politicized crowd of hundreds of thousands of
people. The human river recites a slogan with dissent rate. Afterwards another
slogan is heard from the head of the demonstration and is transmitted until the
end, by replacing the first one. So, a wave of transition starts from the head
until the end of the demonstration. The clamor fills the city, the inhibitory
power of the voice and the rhythm is the highest that could ever be. It is
about an event particularly bright and beautiful regarding its own ferociousness.
Thereafter, there is the conflict between the protestors and the enemy. The
perfect rhythm of the last slogan decays in a vast crowd of chaotic screams
that are transmitted until the end of the demonstration. Let’s imagine
additional to that the bursts of the machineguns and the whistle of the bullets
that add their intonation in this complete disarray. Then, very quickly, the
crowd is dissolved, the sonic and the visual hell is succeeded by an explosive
calmness, full of despair, death and dust.”
(Iannis Xenakis, 21).
Iannis Xenakis' studies and his profession as an architect and engineer (these
two were considered to be almost the same by Greek Universities in previous
decades), as Makis Solomos marked in his book about Xenakis, affected deeply his music in terms of
practical mathematics and a holistic spatial notion of sound.
But
can the opposite also be true? Can we find examples of architectural structures
that are affected mainly by sound? As an architect and a theorist Juhani Pallasmaa
stated in his book The Architecture of
image: Existential Space in Cinema, since the 1970s architects have
fervently sought connections with other art forms—such as seeking inspiration
in painting, sculpture, literature and music. Architects’ interest in infusing
their work with echoes of other art forms indicates that the architecture has
become uncertain of its essence and future course.
Searching deeper in older historical periods,
such as 1950s, I came across Steen E. Rasmussen’s classic architectural theory book Experiencing
Architecture. Steen
E. Rasmussen, a Danish
architect and urban planner, acknowledged that “It is possible to speak of hearing architecture.”
He believed that sound is a major factor of architecture—even
if many of us could say that a building does not produce sound, and therefore
cannot be heard. But isn't this also true about light? A building does not
radiate light, yet it can be seen. Rasmussen concludes, “Though you cannot hear whether
or not it is good architecture, neither is it certain you can see whether it is
good or not, you can both see and hear if a building has character.”
(Steen
E. Rasmussen, 224).
And
as I continued my journey exploring contemporary architecture, I came across
the work of Peter Zumthor, a Swiss architect and winner of the 2009 Pritzker Prize, whose
work I have always admired. As he claimed in his book Atmospheres, “The Sound of a Space” is one of the nine aspects that
concerned him in order to generate a certain atmosphere in his buildings. He
believes that interiors are like large instruments that collect sound,
amplifying and transmitting it somewhere. According to Zumthor, that particular
sound of his spaces has to do with the shape peculiar to each room, with the
surfaces of the materials they contain and the materials that have been
applied.
But do we tend to associate certain sounds with certain rooms? Do the spaces speak? To be continued...
References:
Σολωμός, Μάκης. Iannis Xenakis: the Universe of an
Idiosyncratic Creator. Αθήνα: εκδόσεις Αλεξάνδρεια, 2008. Print.
Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Architecture of Image: Existential Space in
Cinema. Helsinki: Rakennustieto Publishing, 2007. Print.
Rasmussen, Steen
E. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1959, 1964. Print.
Zumthor, Peter. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments
Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhauser, 2006, 2010. Print.
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