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Argument › No. 14/2022

Rooms of Sound. Three Examples of Architecture to Listen to, Plus One

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.54508/Argument.14.14

  • / Assoc. prof. PhD. Arch., Department of Architecture and Design – Sapienza, University of Rome, IT

Abstract

The research on the relationships between music and architecture, whose aim is to study and design multisensory sound environments, is presented here as a journey through three iconic projects, namely Nikola Bašić’s Sea Organ, Cristopher Rossner and Andre Tempel’s Fullen Wall and Bernhard Leitner’s Le Cylindre Sonore, and through a piece of nomadic sound-architecture that we called Vedere Oltre (Seeing beyond), developed as a design test to analyze the compositional process in its structural aspect.

I have been developing, since the PhD thesis, the research about the logical structures of composition, which is also the area of interest explored in this article. Some design experiments of multisensory environments allow us to analyze the compositional process in its structural aspect, in particular as an investigation on music and architecture as derived from their common belonging to the mathematical/logical structures just mentioned and presented here in the form of “Tales of sound places”, with a discussion of the theoretical aspects in the form of a foreword/overture in the introduction of this paper, which deals with typological and historical aspects aimed at restoring a kind of original equal dignity to container and content.

The article covers the state of the art, investigates the intrinsic multidisciplinarity of architecture as event, but also has the intention to explore a reconfiguration of the environment by using sound material as a constructive, technological and design element, in the same way as other architectural materials.

Keywords

music and architecture, rooms of sound, composition

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