biographies
Justin Bennett (1964) originally
British, studied sculpture
in Sheffield and sonology at
the Royal Conservatoire in
The Hague. He completed his
education in the early 1990s
with a post-graduate study at
the Jan van Eyck Academy in
Maastricht. He has been living
and working in The Hague
since then. The sounds of the
city, in all their diversity, are
an important part of his work.
He makes sound cards of cities
such as Beirut and The Hague,
in which he alerts the listener-
observer to phenomena that
initially are not immediately
perceivable. He continues
to do this in an original and
experimental way, without
resorting to tricks or formats.
Bennett explains his fascination
for sound as follows: Noise is
the sand between your toes, the
chink in the chain, the music
that keeps you awake and the
sea that lulls you to sleep. Noise
is coincidence, chance and luck.
Noise is the vibration of life
itself.
Barry Blesser received his
Ph.D. in 1969 from mit, and
for the following nine years,
he continued as an associate
professor of electrical
engineering and research
scientist in the Cognitive
Information Processing
Group. One of the pioneers
of digital audio technology
during the 1970s, he developed
the first commercial artificial
reverberation system, which
was used extensively in
adding spatiality to recorded
music. For the last 40 years,
he has provided technical
and management consulting
services to more than 50
companies worldwide, founded
several high-technology
companies, received numerous
patents and published in a wide
variety of professional journals.
In 2006, after five years of
reseach on the physical and
cognitve experience of sound
in space, mit Press published
his book Spaces Speak, Are You
Listening? Experiencing Aural
Architetcure.
Berend Jan Bockting (1983)
studied media and culture as
well as journalism and media at
the University of Amsterdam.
He has written for, amongst
others, the vpro Gids and
De Groene Amsterdammer
magazines. He is currently
an editor with de Volkskrant
newspaper, where he writes
about media, art and film. He
likes personal, human stories
behind the art and the artists,
and he has a weakness for
abandoned industrial sites,
reflective skyscrapers, and
the artistic extremities in
electronic music and Asian
cinema.
Sound artist Cilia Erens
(1946), a planner by training,
introduced the so-called sound
walk to the Netherlands
in 1987. She uses everyday,
mostly unmixed sound in her
sound walks, sound panoramas
and soundscapes. She is able
to penetrate deeper layers of
being without resorting to
text, using the audible space
as her speciality. One of her
best-known works is Silencer,
a sound performance about
the silence of not speaking. In
every artwork about sound,
the chosen form is part of the
content.
Listening to her compositions
always results in a new
reality within the existing
one: an augmented reality.
Countless listeners experienced
that during sound walks
in Rotterdam, Taipei,
Broekpolder, Amsterdam,
Berlin, Yogyakarta and other
places.
biographies
Raviv Ganchrow (1972)
completed his architectural
studies at the Cooper Union,
New York in 2000, and received
a second degree from the
Institute of Sonology at The
Royal Conservatoire in The
Hague in 2004. His practice
focuses on interrelations
between sound, place and
listener, aspect of which
are explored through sound
installations, writings as
well as the development of
sound-forming technologies
such as Wave Field Synthesis.
His sound installations
and sound works have been
exhibited in the usa, France,
Austria, the Netherlands and
Norway. He has been teaching
architectural design in the
graduate programme at Delft
University of Technology, and
is currently a faculty member at
the Institute of Sonology.
After being classically trained
as a pianist and composer
in Poland and Russia from
the age of five, Sebastian
Janusz (1978) began his
architectural education in
Poland and Germany and
completed his masters degree
at the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture in 2005.
He gained his professional
experience while collaborating
with well-regarded
architectural practices
including Herman Hertzberger,
nl Architects and Abbink De
Haas architectures.
Currently he combines
practicing architecture with
composing and performing
his music. His architectural
projects have been exhibited
in arcam, the Amsterdam
Centre for Architecture,
while his compositions
have been performed in het
Concertgebouw Amsterdam
and Van Gogh Museum
Amsterdam, among others.
In his work he concentrates
on the dialogue as an
effective means of on-going
communication. Its target is
to increase view of multiple
perspectives in order to create
a new understanding of a
situation that demands change.
Amsterdam, a city which has
a long tradition of culture and
debate, plays a key role in this
process.
He is a visiting critic at the
Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture and at the
at the Delft University of
Technology.
Maarten Kloos (1947) studied Lieselore Maes (1978) was
architecture at the Delft born in Belgium and has lived
University of Technology in Amsterdam since 1981.
from 1966 to 1976. During and As a student of geography at
after his studies he worked the universities of Utrecht
for various architects in and Amsterdam she was
Amsterdam and Paris. From particularly fascinated by
1979 onwards he taught the geography of the city. She
architectural design at Delft completed her internship at
University of Technology and arcam Amsterdam Centre
at various academies. From for Architecture, and has
1981 to 1986 he was head of the continued to work there on
department of architecture at a project basis ever since. In
the Amsterdam Academy of 2010, for example, she worked
Architecture. Over the years on the exhibitionMusic, Space
he has given many lectures and Architecture. In addition,
at architecture schools and she worked for the Physical
institutes at home and abroad. Planning Department of
Kloos has written numerous the City of Amsterdam. She
articles for various was also involved in the first
publications, including foreign exhibition of the Van Eesteren
magazines such as LArchitecture Museum in Amsterdam New-
dAujourdhui and Werk, Bauen West.
+ Wohnen. From 1976 onwards
he published regularly in
Wonen-ta/bk (which later
became Archis). In addition, he
was architecture critic for de
Volkskrant newspaper from 1979
until 1986. Important books by
Kloos include Le paradis terrestre
de Picassiette , Alexander Bodon,
architect, Schiphol Architecture
and Godin van de Zuidas: De
Minervalaan - as in tijd en ruimte.
In 1986, Kloos co-founded
arcam, the Amsterdam
Centre for Architecture. In
his capacity as director of
arcam, he has organized
many debates and exhibitions
about new architectural and
spatial developments in the
Amsterdam area. He launched
and is editor-in-chief of the
arcam pockets, a series of
multilingual paperbacks. In
addition, Kloos has initiated
much talked-about projects
such as Boomtown Amsterdam
(1988) and the (digital) map the
arcam kaart (1995).
In addition to his activities at
arcam, Kloos has contributed
to many public debates and
publications and has been a
member of various competition
juries and advisory committees.
He is a member of the board
of the Van Doesburghuis
Foundation in Meudon and the
foundation Europan Nederland.
Until recently he was also
a member of the board of
Platform Architectuur Lokaal.
In 2000, Maarten Kloos
was awarded the prestigious
Rotterdam Maaskant Prize.
Annette Bos. Tabula Rasa
David Tins. Calming parc
Chris Verstappen. Urban volume
Kim Verhoeven. Space in four parts
Kim Verhoeven. Space in four parts
Jasper Smits. Pavilion at Westkapelse Kreek
Jasper Smits. Pavilion at Westkapelse Kreek
Jasper ten Bosch. Phase patterns
Jasper ten Bosch. Phase patterns
Jurgis Dagelis. Monument for human greed
Jurgis Dagelis. Monument for human greed
Narda Beunders. Mobius music walls
Narda Beunders. Mobius music walls
Nirya Zurheide. Pavilion traffic
Nirya Zurheide. Pavilion traffic
Meritxell Blanco Diaz. Shhhh...listen!
Research Reflections Projects 05

Music,
Space and
Architecture

Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

Architectura & Natura
Aart Oxenaar
Foreword 20

Introduction
Maarten Kloos
Theme 22

Machiel Spaan
Research 30

Urban space
Justin Bennett
Sound collecting 35

Cilia Erens
The audible space 43

Architectural space
Rob Metkemeijer
The acoustic space 51

Sjoerd Soeters
A74523 in relation to M39762 61

Jacob Voorthuis
Thinking boundaries in the production of architecture and music 67

Machiel Spaan
Musical approaches to space 77

Experimental space
Berend Jan Bockting
Three compositions for the Noorderkerk 95

Lieselore Maes
Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at arcam 105

Sebastian Janusz and Machiel Spaan

Space to listen 117

Intrinsic space
Barry Blasser and Linda-Ruth Salter
Eventscapes: the aural experience of space 131

Raviv Ganchrow
Shapes of time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality 141

Bart Visser
Creating space 147
Foreword
Aart Oxenaar
director Amsterdam Academy of Architecture

Attempt to express the melancholia laden with sweet

nostalgia that filled the heart upon hearing the tones of
worship emanating from the church. Rarely has belief in
the power of the interaction between space and music to
lend meaning to architecture been expressed so succinctly.
With this famous inscription on an engraving of a church
building seen beyond a graveyard, most of it obscured
by a huge tree, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, with a typically
romantic idea, identified the heavily charged connection
between music, space and architecture the theme of this
publication from the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture.
The church acquires meaning as a place of consolation and
salvation in a fallen universe and the architectural space
comes to life, touches the heart, through the music.

The title of the project does not, however, refer to Schinkel

but to Siegfried Giedions Space, Time and Architecture.
And that is no coincidence. With his study Giedion helped
to find a way to shed the burden of meanings that were
threatening to crush the architecture of his time. Not by
making it meaningless but by elevating space itself and its
use over time as the bearer of meaning. And with this design
and research project a series of authors, after a period of
iconic buildings and postmodernist excess, search for useful
tools, foundations and metaphors on which meaningful
architectural forms can be developed. Music turns out to be
one of them.

20
foreword

Music, Space and Architecture is the result of a special

collaboration with the Stichting Noorderkerkconcerten,
the initiator, the Theaterschool, the Conservatorium
van Amsterdam, arcam and the Academy of
Architecture. Researchers, designers (both architects
and scenographers), performing musicians and composers
dealt, both individually and in collaboration, with the
potential of music and more generally of sound as a means
of reflecting on space, experiencing it and bringing it to
life. It is precisely by putting space first and foremost that
we hope this publication will encourage fresh research into
productive relations, deployable in design, between music,
space and architecture.

21
Theme
Maarten Kloos

Music, space and architecture: it is a concise summary

of a whole universe. A trinity that brings together three
notions, all of them extensive, multi-interpretable and
hence difficult to define. Because each of them appeals to
our associative power and therefore always encourages
new and creative ideas, it is logical that a multitude and,
especially, wide diversity of definitions can emerge over
time, most of them closely linked to the time they were
formulated.

For a start, it is of course a trio of complex dualities of great

complexity. The relation between architecture and space
has something self-evident, which is why they have always
traditionally been labelled without difficulty as the natural
habitat of the architect. Music and space possess that to
a lesser extent. More often, their mutual connection is
considered to be an exceptional phenomenon, especially by
composers of old. It is for good reason that the link between
music and architecture, the most difficult to explain, has
traditionally been the domain of theorists, among them
both specialists in the two professions and writers, poets,
philosophers and historians interested in a wide range of
subjects. All this means that interpretations of the triad
of music-space-architecture inevitably lead to making a
choice. To which element do we give priority? What is the
basic idea as, it were? In this publication that is deliberately
space.

22
introduction

One of the ideas behind this choice was that numerous

misunderstandings could be solved by analysing the
role that space can play, both independently and as an
intermediary. Especially those misunderstandings that
concern the easily assumed connections and parallels
between music and architecture. The best example of this
is the well-known assumption that architecture is frozen
music. A statement apparently first made by Goethe, which
totally denies that the relation between the two is a dynamic
one that should be considered in terms of fluidity and
variability.

If we consider what the existence of different spaces

means for the music-space-architecture phenomenon,
then it is obvious we should consciously review a series of
dimensions, from small to big, as though they concerned
a literally expanding universe. Or, perhaps more
interestingly, the reverse: from big to small. But to begin
somewhere, let us imagine a typical concert situation. In
other words, a spatial constellation in which we listen with
other people to one or more musicians who produce music.
A situation, therefore, in which the individual enjoys a
rich array of possible interactions (with the surrounding
space, with other listeners, with the performer, with the
music being played). This can happen in very different ways
by profiting from combinations of different interactions.
Thats why there are people who can only enjoy music
to the full in such a context spatial, architectural, and
invariably of great social complexity and there are also
people who are unable to do that on account of the profusion
of stimuli. The notion of space fans in all directions here.

23
introduction

If we concentrate on space and architecture, then we are

essentially dealing with aesthetic qualities and acoustics.
It is these elements that make it possible to bring the
architecture to the music as it were (by adapting halls
to customary music practice or even to highly specific
interpretations of it see the 19th- and 20th-century
concert halls for symphony music, in particular venues
like the Berlin Philharmonic by Hans Scharoun and Music
Centre Vredenburg). One can also try to design a space
in such a way that it forms a container for that single piece
of music for which the designer intended it such as The
Male Womb by the design offices mat and Elastik, tailored
specially for the Kindertotenlieder by Mahler. Zaha Hadid
walks a middle course in the pavilion she designed for
performances of chamber music by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Based on meanings she read into the work of Bach, this
pavilion provides an inspiring space in a space, which when
erected in the Westergasfabriek (summer 2010) easily met
all objectives: not only Bachs music sounded good here.

Conversely, music can be tailored to a particular location

and thus be brought to architecture, so to speak. Music
and architecture can be tied together in a subtle manner
this happens in the Festspielhaus by Richard Wagner in
Bayreuth and must have once been evident in the Philips
Pavilion by Le Corbusier, Xenakis and Varse in Brussels
but the nature of the music can also correspond in more
relaxed fashion with the character of a certain space. For
example, the idea is mooted that the St. Thomas Church in
Leipzig was of critical importance for the musical content
of the works by Bach from the time he worked in that city.
This is an interesting idea because one could cast doubts
24
introduction

on its validity, doubts arising from the fact that we are

dealing with an immeasurable situation with far too many
variables (is the relation the result of the spatial form, of
the reverberation time, of the position of the public, of the
particular ideas of the composer?). What is certain is that
the measurable reality and virtual forms are bridged here.
And, remarkably enough, that is also a highly manageable
phenomenon, which is well expressed in the most intimate
manner of experiencing music: the situation in which the
music and the listening individual are in contact with each
other via a closed circuit such as a headphones.

Many people will take the view that space, and thus
architecture, is absent in that situation. It makes more
sense, however, to argue that space is very much present
there, only turned inward. In other words, that an interior
space exists (you could call it virtual) which plays a
role in the experience of music. Countless photographs
and film sequences of musicians listening to one of their
own recordings on headphones make clear, by their
facial expressions, for example, that this is how one can
summon up maximum concentration. Indeed, the degree
of concentration often seems to be nothing other than the
reflection of inner space.

This space evokes rich associations, which the recent

cd by cellist Quirine Viersen illustrates. In the text that
accompanies her recording of the six Bach suites, she states
that this music sounds best in a church space (note: Pablo
Casals imagined he was in a cathedral when playing the
sixth suite). For the cd, therefore, Viersen played the suites
in the Wallonian Church in Amsterdam. It means that the
25
introduction

Musing about music, space and architecture, in a decor by Zaha Hadid and in the company of Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Westergasfabriek, Holland Festival, 6 June 2010).
26
introduction

27
introduction

space (of the church) is important insofar as it gives the

cellist the idea that it is there, more than anywhere else, that
she can give what to her feels like an honest rendering of
the suites. Listeners of the cd from a distance of course,
in individual isolation are the beneficiaries, for they will
hear a performance the musician believes in. By then the
space of the church has vanished from view, since it was
simply used as a vehicle for making the recording. Space
here seems to be a paradoxical concept in two respects,
something of a black hole that is both there and not there at
the same time, a catalyst that eliminates itself.

In my opinion, this is the route that designers who study

the relation between music, space and architecture should
follow. Not primarily to discover certainties but, rather,
to search for the most creative circumscribing movements
and, thus, to sound out the limits of this trio of concepts.

28
Research
Machiel Spaan

Many buildings are designed to please the eye. Yet other

senses influence how we experience buildings spatially. In
addition to sight, smell and touch, hearing determines the
experience of space to a great extent. Every building and
every space has its own particular sound.

Music, Space and Architecture aims to break the dominance

of sight. Examining the relation between music and
architecture draws attention away from the visual. Key
questions in this study are: In which ways does sound
(and music) influence the atmosphere of a space? How
does the design of space influence the sound of this space?
What effect does this have on the occupant of the space?
How can sound and acoustics suggest space? And how can
the knowledge and insight acquired through research be
deployed in spatial design? Putting space foremost offers a
new perspective on the relation between architecture and
music. Space enters into a dialogue with both architecture
and music and brings the two closer together.

Music, Space and Architecture examines spatial experience

in relation to architecture and music at different scales.
Both the urban and the architectural experience of space in
relation to music are explored. In addition, the experimental
and intrinsically focused facets of the relation between
music, space and architecture are highlighted in a number of
contributions.

30
introduction

Two collectors of sounds from the city listen in on urban

space. Sonologist and artist Justin Bennett collects
urban sounds. The material found forms the starting
point for an intuitive process. Sounds are manipulated,
distorted and pasted one after another. This results in new
compositions with sound spaces that have a rationale of
their own. While Justin Bennett collects the sounds of
the city as raw material for his sound sculptures, sound
artist Cilia Erens tries to assess the sounds of the city on
the basis of their spatial qualities. Erens registers, records
and plays the recorded sound spaces in other places again.
Isolating these sound spaces from the visual context can
foster an understanding of the significance of sound in the
experience of urban space.

Four essays on architectural space illuminate the relation

between architecture and music and how space mediates
between them. Acoustic engineer Rob Metkemeijer
describes how the architecture of space can shape itself to
sound. A good acoustic space is given shape and materials
to serve music. Architect Sjoerd Soeters explains the
connection between architecture and music as a need to
create a coherent entity. According to Soeters, in both
disciplines harmony is a prerequisite for the experience of
(spatial) beauty. In his essay, philosopher Jacob Voorthuis
looks for a new model to connect music and architecture.
The essence of this new model lies in human actions.
The perception of the individual is the focus. People
possess the tools to experience and connect music and
architecture. The concepts of rhythm and movement are
central concerns here. Architect Machiel Spaan describes
how music and sound can inspire designers in creating
31
introduction

space. Design projects by students serve as illustrations of

how space is approached from different perspectives.

Music and architecture are the source of artistic work

in experimental space. Journalist Berend Jan Bockting
interviews three composers from the Conservatorium
van Amsterdam who bring music to a particular space: the
Noorderkerk. The composers describe their association
with the space and how the music they composed responds
to this space. Lieselore Maes describes the space evoked
by the objects contained in the exhibition Music, Space
and Architecture at the arcam gallery. The nine sound
objects suggest spaces that are not visible but experienced
by visitors themselves according to their own powers
of association. In Spaces to listen, Sebastian Janusz and
Machiel Spaan use four sound experiments conducted at
the Academy of Architecture to describe how the sound
artist and the performer deploy space in their work. They
set these experiments in a broader context of historical
examples in which architecture and music sense and
strengthen each other in space.

In the contributions dealing with intrinsic space, the

researchers question how we experience the space within
ourselves. Three essays examine the interiorized (invisible)
space of the observer. Barry Blasser and Linda-Ruth
Salter describe the sound space from the observer towards
the space. They analyse the sensorial experience of space
through the senses. The notion of eventscape is introduced
to denote the integral spatial experience of a visitor in a
space. The authors describe strategies that the user of the
eventscape employs to use and lend meaning to this auditive
32
introduction

space. In Spaces of time, architect and sonologist Raviv

Ganchrow describes this sound space from another angle.
He explores the properties of the sound that influences
the spatial experience. A sound space is not physically
determined but fluid. By considering sound itself as a
material with which you can construct acoustic space, Raviv
Ganchrow introduces a new dimension for spatiality. In his
contribution Creating space, artist and scenographer Bart
Visser asks how you the designer can evoke an interiorized
space within the listener. Drawing on his own work and that
of students, he searches for the essence of creating space.
How do you create the right conditions to enable the listener
to enjoy a personal spatial experience? And where do
architecture and music encounter each other in this quest?

The sequence in which the contributions are arranged

according to different spatial scenarios offers just a reading
suggestion. The reader is free to move at will through the
book. Just as you wander about the city or through a space
and only see what you want to look at, or hear what you
really want to hear. This unforced reading experience
that introduces the reader to a range of approaches is
supported in this book by a large number of citations taken
from previous publications devoted to the theme. The
publication Music, Space and Architecture therefore hopes to
contribute to the ongoing debate on the relation between
music and architecture. Moreover, attention focuses here
on the experience of space. The publication seeks to inspire
designers to deepen that quality, both in its design and its
experience, through sound, rhythm, structure, sequence
and more.

33
urban space / Sound collecting

34
Sound
collecting
Justin Bennett

35
urban space / Sound collecting

Archive/jb/urban_sound/archive/ with these sounds, the memories are unleashed

If you make and collect audio recordings of
cities, what are you doing? Should you call
it music, acoustic ecology, sound hunting,
sociology, sound art, phonography or
rhythmanalysis, that profession proposed
by Henri Lefebvre which seems somehow to
combine all of these things? Lets dip into my
archive and listen
Listening to sounds that I have recorded
myself always brings back memories. Not
only can I usually remember where and when
the recording was made, but I also remember
many trivial or personal details. For anybody
else, many of those memories have no
logical connection with the sound itself. My
archive contains source recordings, worked
recordings, edits, mixes and finished masters.
At the same time, its a diary, incredibly
personal, albeit in an obscure, coded way which
requires my memory to unlock it. When I work
sometimes I change or edit a sound in order
to exorcise a haunted, unwanted recollection;
sometimes the memories become a secret
structuring device.
What a stranger can hear in a sound recording
are more or less recognizable sounds and the
space in which they resound. These can give
clues to the country or city, the time of day or
year, the weather, etc. If the sound was recorded
on a wax phonograph, wire recorder, optical
film strip, cassette or mobile phone, which all
sound different, you could even place the sound
in a particular decade.
There are as many approaches to using
microphones as there are recordists:
You could ask yourself where the sounds are
that you wish to record? Are they to be found at
the source of the sound, are they in your ears or
somewhere in the space in between?

/CAS031/cervera_walk1.aif a ventilator, the sound of

This sound is from a cassette
from 1991. Footsteps (my
own) echo along a passage.
Carrer de les Bruixes in
Cervera, Catalonia. The
Witches Street. A sleepy
afternoon. There are no
witches to be heard on the
tape, but occasionally one
hears a muffled voice from
inside a house (the passage
snaked along the hillside
among and sometimes
underneath the houses),
cooking (bringing back
a memory of smells) or a
television. The echoey parts
of the tape were recorded in
dark, cool spaces under the
houses. When the passage
opened out, sometimes
introducing the sounds of
birds or insects, the sun /DAT095/munster_bells_
beating down was almost close.aif
unbearable. I was walking to The pealing of church bells
meet my girlfriend in a caf mixes with voices speaking
on a square near the railway German, footsteps and a
station. splashing fountain.

36
The space I have described is
urban space / The audible space

the space of a direct physical

experience, and by going
through this experience we
arrive at a new inner space.

Jonathan Cott (ed.). Stockhausen: conversations with the composer. London 1974, p. 45.

37
Anyone who has become
urban space / The audible space

entranced by the sound of

dripping water in the
darkness of a ruin can attest
to the extraordinary capacity
of the ear to carve a volume
into the void of darkness.
The space traced by the ear
in the darkness becomes a
cavity sculpted directly in
the interior of the mind.

Juhani Pallasmaa. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses. Chichester 2005, p.50.

38
urban space / Sound collecting

Recording with microphones in your ears1
seems to be closest to your own perception of
sound. But its not only the sound that you will
capture, but also the movements of your head
and body a breath, a sniff, a footstep. When
you listen back to the recording on headphones,
its as if you are really there, but someone else is
there too the ghost of the body of the recordist is
also present on the tape.
Other microphone techniques shift focus
and perspective to different degrees. 2 Small
microphones can go where your ears cant
inside a bottle on a beach perhaps. Then the
resonance of the vessel can be a stronger element
in the recording than the surrounding noises.
Attach a contact microphone to a window and
it turns into a huge microphone. Are you then
listening to a sheet of glass, or are you hearing
the world as if you were a sheet of glass?
I might go to a city to plan to record an event:
a market, demonstration or ceremony.
Or a place: plaza, atrium, park, alleyway.
Or a thing: a flag in the wind, boat horns in the
harbour.
But often I will just walk. An aural derive
following your ears is a great way to explore
a place, but sometimes I will follow someone
in order to be taken somewhere unexpected.
The recording becomes a trace, a line drawn
through the city.
Im especially fond of recording walks which
cross acoustic thresholds: moving from a
busy street into an echoing passage or sleepy
courtyard, or from an expensive shopping
street into a poor area with kids playing street
football. The recordings reveal just how much
our hearing can tell us about the urban fabric.
One can use technology to reveal the acoustic
signature of a space.3 Space itself is then heard,
distilled. But in everyday life the spaces of
the city are sounded by the activities that

/DAT328/madrid_
fountain_pump.aif
The sound of a fountain
with voices and birds in
the middle distance. The
microphone is resting on a
wall, accidentally picking
up a mechanical vibration
(the pump for the fountain?)
which creates a musical
drone underneath the other
sounds.
/DAT379/funicular_
descent.aif
Many voices, close to the
listener. Behind these, heavy
traffic. Footsteps on stone
steps lead us away from
the traffic into a resonant /2009/bcn01/macba_plein_
space. Beeping and clunking soundscheck.wav
machines check the flow of Skaters on a plaza create
the crowd. The soft hum echoes from the buildings
of escalators and other when their boards hit
machines fills the space as the ground. Someone is
we descend quietly to the testing a PA system with a
platforms. microphone.

39
urban space / Sound collecting

take place in them. The interaction between No matter how purist your approach is to
productive or playful activity and acoustic making a recording, when its played through
space creates a social sonic space. Children loudspeakers into a room the equipment and
playing or skateboarders use sound to signal the acoustics of the space change the sound into
their activity, laying claim to the space. If you something else. The result is never the same as
listen to recordings of public spaces, can you the original soundfield and not even the same as
hear if they are socially successful spaces or the signals recorded onto the tape.
not? Conversely, could one base a plan for a new
public space on an acoustic design? Electronic manipulation of sound is for me
primarily an extension of the recording
There is much debate in the world of phono process. Its like zooming into the sound to
graphy on how much one is allowed to change hear it more clearly. Using filters, you can scan
sound once it has been recorded. And just as with through the frequency range of a recording for
photography there is a spectrum of different interesting details which can then be separated
approaches ranging from the sonic snapshot to from the background noise. Transposition
the framed or even staged recording. (varispeed) plays the sound at different
speeds, moving unnoticed frequency areas into
For me a recording is a trace made by a listener. the audible range.
A listener engaging with the soundscape and
making choices by choosing when to record, This process is a special form of listening,
with which microphone, from which distance or re-interpreting the sound to intensify what it is
by moving. Just being present in an environment that I find interesting.
changes the way that it will sound.

/DAT290/bcn_roof_
telinga.aif
We hear noises from the
surrounding streets and
houses (voices, cooking,
air conditioning, a siren,
bells). I move the microphone
between different resonant /the_well/work/istik_b_res- /sundial/Den_ Haag_roof/
chambers from buckets and 12_ LPF.wav dh_ 21.08.2005.15.32.00.wav
a tin bath on the roof, through A very resonant droning Birds chattering. Distant
the kitchen and bathroom sound in which voice-like traffic. A dog barks, a child
to an echoing airshaft in the details can be detected, shouts, then another. A
centre of the building. sometimes a phrase of music. distant aeroplane.

40
urban space / Sound collecting

This reinterpretation can start to suggest
compositional strategies. But every process
creates more distance between the listener
and the original recorded event, eventually
replacing it with a new perception altogether.
Editing sound is, of course, also a form of
manipulation creating musical or narrative
form. In extreme cases, the minute splicing of
sounds can create new ones. 4 Generally though,
I like to keep sound in large chunks. Sounds for
me are not objects, samples that I have hunted
and captured, but excerpts of life which reveal
spaces, atmospheres, movements and rhythms.
Even when strongly processed the rhythms
and movements are still present in the resulting
sound.
On its own this sound doesnt tell anyone very
much, it only makes sense in context. This
is a fragment from a project called Sundial. I
make acoustic portraits of different cities by
making timed recordings at a single location
over the course of a day. Later I edit these
sounds chronologically into a piece lasting
just a few minutes. The acoustic signatures of
the cities and their daily rhythms can thus be
(subjectively) compared. At first I thought that
after I had made a few of these pieces it would
become boring, and that I would stop. But I
realized that the repetition of this process,
despite or perhaps because of the boring
bits, was teaching me to listen to the city in a
different way. For instance, trying to find the
moment, usually between three and five in the
morning, when there is something in the city
that I can call silence a different silence for
every city in the world.
The Rhythmanalyst will listen to the world,
and above all to what are disdainfully called
noises, which are said without meaning, and to
murmurs, full of meaning and finally he will
listen to silences.5

1 Binaural recording uses omni- 4 Techniques such as brassage or

directional microphones placed
in or near the ears of the recordist.
This technique gives a very realistic
three-dimensional effect when
heard through headphones, and
it is often used when creating
soundwalk pieces.
2 For instance, cardioid microphones
pick up sound from the front
and not behind, ms stereo
microphones allow the adjustment
of the stereo width, shotgun or
parabolic microphones bring a
sound perceptually closer, while
ambisonic microphones attempt to
capture the whole field of sound in
three dimensions.
3 By recording a pistol shot or a
sweeping sine wave in a space, one
then can capture, analyse and use
its acoustic signature or impulse
response.
granulation automatically chop
sounds into thousands of grains,
which can be then stretched or
re-ordered. What is the smallest
piece of recorded sound one can
hear, and still hear what it was?
5 Henri Lefebvre. The
Rhythmanalyst: A Previsionary
Portrait. In: Rhythmanalysis, Space,
Time and Everyday Life. New York
2004.

41
urban space / The audible space

42
The
audible
space
Cilia Erens

43
urban space / The audible space
Listening to see
An invisible medium surrounds us 24 hours a day.
Listening to it usually happens subconsciously. The
way space manifests itself to your ear, how our view
is coloured by how we listen: you only discover that
if you study it very specifically. What would the city
look like if architects and urban designers considered
sound in their spatial design?
When I studied town and country planning no
attention was given to the audible dimension
of the built environment. Consideration
for sound in that profession almost always
concerns acoustics or noise pollution. The
fact that clients and architects automatically
construct audible spaces and, as organizers of
space, influence sound patterns and create new
ones only became clear to me when I examined
the notion of audible space as a sound artist.
For me, audible space means listening to your
surroundings as a three-dimensional space
that is continually changing in tone, volume,
movement and layers.
What does the audible space tell us? A lot.
For as invisible as sound is, it also offers us
insight. I started to listen more consciously
to the surroundings, as though they formed
a composition of adjacent and overlapping
sound spaces that disclose something about
the built environment and its occupants. That
awareness increased when I started to make
sound walks in different cities. As I listened, I
discovered what made the centre of Rotterdam,
for example, sound so different to Amsterdam
or Groningen. And I discovered just how varied
city noise can be those distantly audible that pervaded some 20th-century buildings
sounds or the prevailing blanket of sound
generated by the city and its inhabitants. And
I discovered just how little diversity resounds
in many Vinex districts with their massive
volume of new construction.
As a sound artist I have increasingly focused
on sound themes that relate to the city in
addition to silence and collective silence. But
always, the audible space was and is my starting
point in creating new experiences for others
and appealing to the imagination of my public.
I usually organize my presentations in the form
of sound walks, for groups or individuals.
44
Another aspect of my work is sound scans
of public space, which can be combined
with a particular recording technique as an
instrument in studying the design of space. 1 In
my workshops for students at the Amsterdam
Academy of Architecture and elsewhere,
listening on location, often with the aid of
blindfolds, is the starting point in helping them
to develop an initial awareness of their audible
surroundings and to start analyzing and arriving
at new questions.
Form studies at the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture
The representation of a masterwork
During one of the educational projects at
the Academy of Architecture, we analyzed
the interior spaces of buildings around Mr.
Visserplein in Amsterdam, a square that borders
the inner city. Centuries-old buildings, among
them the academy itself, alternate with buildings
dating from the 20th century, each offering a
sound experience of its own. The 17th-century
Portuguese Synagogue has a unique acoustic
character in which outside sounds are all
that indicate time. Electricity has never been
installed in the building for religious reasons.
These listening sessions are confrontational.
As soon as students start to listen consciously,
they realize just how much buildings differ
from one another in what they evoke. (Fig. 1)
The undisturbed silence of the Portuguese
Synagogue induced a sense of concentration that
was far removed from the sense of disorientation
with their hard materials and the humming of
ventilation equipment. That was experienced
most strongly in the concrete playground
TunFun, located beneath the square. Here,
the air conditioning drones in every nook and
cranny.
This project resulted in a sound panorama
of the square, which we could listen to with
headphones, with the centuries-old silence
of the synagogue as the audible highlight and
the representation of a masterwork, as the
underlying theme of the study was called.
Wherever we are, what we
urban space / Sound collecting

hear is mostly noise. When

we ignore it, it disturbs us.
When we listen to it, we nd
it fascinating.

John Cage. The Future of Music: Credo. Lecture, Seattle 1937.

45
High and low, bright and
urban space / Sound collecting

dark, these are psychological

properties of acoustical
perception: impressions
relating to locations whose
reality is that of aural
psychology rather than of
physical space.

Karl H.Worner. Stockhausen Life and Work. London 1973, p.155.

46
urban space / The audible space
(Fig. 1) The Portuguese Synagoge, Amsterdam
(Fig. 2) Sound-seeing Ypenburg: Encounters in the sound
landscape of the drawing table
47
The audible city boundary
The study project entitled the audible city
boundary focused on exactly that the
audibility of the city boundary. Can you hear
that in the 21st century? In contrast to other
Western European capitals, Amsterdams
boundary has some sharp, physical
demarcations, abrupt transitions from the city
to the world beyond. Housing and industrial
estates stretching for kilometres along arterial
roads are largely absent. Can we listen to this as
a quality in its own right, and how do we make it
audible in a presentation?
Before we could listen to the city, I told the
students about my experiences with audible
space in a relatively new type of urban
environment: the Vinex district of Ypenburg on
the edge of The Hague. I had made a sound walk
there in 2006 entitled Sound-seeing Ypenburg:
Encounters in the sound landscape of the
drawing table (Fig. 2). What I discovered
there was the audible effect of the one-sided
population make-up and corresponding design.
You heard a regular sound pattern, largely
determined by the absence of double-income
couples during the day and by the school
timetable of the children. Unpredictable
layers of sound, such as the rustle of trees in
the wind, were lacking completely in some
neighbourhoods. Trees were scarcely planted
that has since changed owing to complaints
from the people of Ypenburg or were too
small to attract birds. That resulted in a brick
silence during the daytime and evening,
except when the school opened its doors and the
echoes of playing children reverberated off the
stone walls. I came across similar patterns in
parts of IJburg (Amsterdam) and Broekpolder
(Beverwijk/Heemskerk), as though these
new expansion districts had been rolled out as
identical carpets of sound.
In the discussion that followed, the students
wondered how that would affect the children
who grow up there. And they asked whether
you can design a square or neighbourhood
sound. Can you consider sound as a factor in the
design process?
With this knowledge in our minds, we
organized various listening walks at a number
of strategic points in Amsterdam. We asked
urban space / The audible space

ourselves at what point does the city really start

to sound like an inner city. What does a road
leading out of the city sound like? What does
a city boundary sound like? We searched for
earcatchers, sound themes that linger in the
ear, as elements that can be measured.

Inner-city boundary
First of all, we examined the boundaries of
the inner city. At Mr. Visserplein, opposite
the academy, two roads into the city converge
with one residential and retail street, the
Jodenbreestraat. Wearing blindfolds, students
started to distinguish elements such as
reflection, layers in sound, sound movements
and densities (Fig. 3). Behind them they heard
diffuse and occasional sounds at different
pitches on a small surface, such as the click of
iron, voices, bike tyres on asphalt, the ringing
of bells, the soft hum of engines sounds (Fig. 3) Examining the audible boundaries at the Mr.
that surface independently of one another and Visserplein, Amsterdam
then recede again. And all this mixed with
a continuous flow of noise from the passing
traffic. It turned out that the blindfolded
students experienced the audible boundary
of the city centre more strongly than those
without blindfolds.

City boundary
After that, we selected as city boundary
the transitional area between the end of the
Rijnstraat and the start of the A2 motorway to
Utrecht. We examined whether, and how, we
could make the idea of a city boundary audible
in a final presentation. We started by listening
to the A2 (Fig. 4). There was the prevailing,
indifferent hum of motorized traffic, and
closer to the road we heard the low-frequency,
unambiguous soundtrack produced by engines
and tyres on asphalt. Definitive proof that the
city and its inhabitants were nearing came in
the form of the rattling warning sounds created (Fig. 4) Listening to the A2 motorway
for blind pedestrians, which mixed with the din
of engines. The end of the motorway had been
signalled. Ten metres further and the sound
landscape had changed completely. Suddenly
the sound of traffic was reflected. And at
precisely that point it mixed with the music
and bustling noises emanating from inside a
building. A loud bell sounded briefly through a
speaker and blended with a metallic soundtrack
that gradually intensified. And we also heard

48
urban space / The audible space

footsteps on slabs, tyres and horses hooves on
asphalt, and the distant sound of a concertina
coming from the same direction as a stationary
vehicle with its heavy engine still running,
from which something was being unloaded. In
short, suddenly a diversity of city sounds that
rose and receded again.
We measured the distance between the sounds
furthest from each other in the transition
zone between motorway and city. Sound
homogeneity was located 340 metres away from
sound diversity, a manifestation of the small-
scale character that we also conveyed in the
final presentation.
I was familiar with the appearance of the
chosen research sites, but that does not imply
that I automatically heard what I saw. Relative
silence is necessary to make diversity audible.
Silence and diversity as two essential qualities
for a human scale in an urban environment.
Can we also come up with objective criteria
to measure the sound patterns of urban spaces
and compare them with one another? Can
those audible criteria be captured by any unit of
measurement? And how could you then deploy
them in a design process? The search for the
answer begins with listening to the audible
space.

Special thanks to Sabien de Kleijn, architect

From analysis to planning

Subjects like homogeneity, scale and

intricacy became audible to the students.
They considered that an enrichment of their
experience in professional practice. Articles
about Jane Jacobs and a documentary on Rudy
Stroink, with their approach to finely-woven
structures as urban qualities, helped in the
analysis of sounds. 2 Can we speak of the most
compact audible city boundary in Europe? Can
we recommend proposing this audible space for
inclusion on the unesco World Heritage List?

Another question is whether such research

offers pointers for composing a desired
urban sound landscape by creating conditions
for redevelopment plans. In the case of
Mr. Visserplein, for example, wide pavements
and cycle lanes have been made since the square
was redeveloped. Motorized traffic has been
reduced, and as a result countless individual
human traces are audible in this sound
landscape.

1 Lino Hellings in collaboration

with Shahidul Alam, Marjolijn
Boterenbrood, Cilia Erens, Toye
Gbade and Rob van Maanen. The
Route and the Destination: dna of the
Vlietzone in The Hague and Flyovers in
Dhaka (Bangladesh), Lagos (Nigeria)
and Sao Paulo (Brazil). The Hague
2011.
2 Lara Schrijver . Review of Jane
Jacobs The Death and Life of Great
American Cities. www.archined.nl,
2009.
Kees Brouwer. De strijd van Rudy
Stroink. vpro Tegenlicht, 2009.

49
architectural space / The acoustic space

50
The
acoustic
space
Rob Metkemeijer

51
architectural space / The acoustic space
The hearing mechanism
Our hearing mechanism began evolving
outdoors. Acoustically, outdoors means that
every sound we hear is only heard once if there
are no sound-reflecting objects. Hearing with
two ears makes it possible to some extent
to hear the direction of the sound source by
correlating the signals received in two ears. To
be able to do this, the wavelength of the sounds
should be about the size of the head, say 550
cm. Sound in air has a frequency equivalent to
700 to 7000 Hz, exactly the frequency range
containing the information of natural speech
and the mid-range of musical sounds. It is
fundamental for the behaviour of sound as a
means of communicating with the world around
us that the wavelengths we hear are on this kind
of a human scale.
Speech will be heard clearest when there is no
additional reflection or reverberation. Good
acoustics for speech can therefore be simply
defined as sufficiently loud and with a minimum
of reverberation, echo and spectral filtering.
When people found shelter and started living in
caves, the hearing mechanism had to cope with
the fact that every sound was not heard once,
but an almost infinite number of times due to
the fact that sound is reflected on the walls and
(Fig. 1) Simple music signal in time
(Fig. 2) The same signal, with reflections and reverberations added
52
ceiling. The caves acoustics in other words.
What does our hearing mechanism do to create
an impression of space?
It does something that we call (binaural)
deconvolution: a correlation process that
recreates the original signal from a signal that
is repeated many times with just as many time
delays. So if we are in a reverberant space, we
still can determine the sound signal that was
originally sent, and also the direction from
which it came (precedence effect).
Hearing the space is like receiving extra
information. We get an impression of the size of
a space by analyzing the reflections repetitive
pattern, and to a certain extent even a general
idea of its shape. But sound bends, diffracts and
disperses due to wavelength effects; there are
no straight sound lines. So there cannot be a
clear acoustic picture.
Music and acoustics
Hearing the acoustics of a space
It is not possible to hear the acoustics of a space
(which is purely a physical property) as such.
A signal will always be heard, often in the
form of music or speech. These are complex
Sound and space are
architectural space / The acoustic space

inextricably connected,
interlocked in a dynamic
through which each performs
the other, bringing aurality
into spatiality and space into
aural definition. This plays
out in an acoustical occurrence
whereby sound sets into relief
the properties of a given
space, its materiality and
characteristics, through
reverberation and reflection,
and, in turn, these
characteristics affect the
given sound and how it is
heard.
Brandon La Belle. Background Noise. London 2007, p.123.

53
In sound-architecture the
architectural space / The acoustic space

shape of space itself is defined

by travelling sound : so as
to change the proportions
and the message of an existing
space.

Bernhard Leitner. Sound architecture: Space created through traveling sound. In: Artforum, March 1971.

54
architectural space / The acoustic space
and constantly varying signals. It is like trying
to see the interior of a space in a light that
changes colour and intensity very quickly and
irregularly, like randomized disco lights.
Learning to see in this way takes time, and one
may need many several different experiences to
get a representative picture of the space. And it
is highly probable that people will see the space
quite differently after such an experiment.
Back to sound, the reflecting boundaries of the
space add many repetitions to the signal, which
cause significant and audible time delays to the
first , direct signal heard. The sources signal
and the acoustics are heard simultaneously, so it
is not easy to separate the two. Yet our auditory
system is equipped to hear the music and the
space more or less separately.
In theory, a continuous white noise,
broadband signal (similar to a continuous white
light for the visual perception of a space) would
be the most suitable way of hearing a space,
but our perception system is not trained for
this. A very short pulse (which basically has a
broadband spectrum) is suitable, however. A
musician that wants to get a first impression of
the acoustics of a space, claps his hands to hear
the response to the pulse.
Blending sound
The acoustics of concert halls are extremely
important for music. Music played by natural
instruments needs to be blended, smoothed
and amplified by the space. A violin sounds
weak and thin outdoors, but it can sound warm
and full in a closed space or even when only
supported by a few sound-reflecting surfaces.
A reason for this is that violins and most other
instruments radiate sound in a highly complex
way, different for all tones. The acoustic space
collects the emitted sound from all directions,
mixes it and diffuses it into the space to the ears
of a listener.
The composition of polyphonic choir (church)
music in the Middle Ages was based on the fact
that the sound energy reaches the ears well
spread out in time, so all the voices are well
mixed.
55
Diffusing all these complex sounds into the
space occurs with time delays of approximately
50 milliseconds per 15 metres. Reverberation
in a space can take a few seconds. The sound
will have travelled a few hundred metres
before becoming inaudible. This means that
when the latest audible reflections reach our
ears, the sound will have travelled around in a
moderately sized room a number of times so the
reverberant sound which determines a major
part of the quality of tone contains information
of the whole space and all of its boundaries.
This is very different from seeing the space,
where all boundaries are perceived as parallel
information at the same time.
Intimacy
The direct sound from a source to the
listener and these early reflections provides
information about the distance to the source
and the dimensions of the space.
An important finding of one of the most
important studies on concert hall acoustics in
the early 1960s by Leo Beranek made clear that
a significant factor for the quality of sound in
a hall is its intimacy, which hinges on the time
delay of the first reflections after the direct
sound. Halls, even large ones, that provide such
reflections will produce intimate sound.
The quality and character of the first reflections
are determined by the position and acoustic
properties of the spaces boundary elements.
The design of these elements is important,
especially around a stage and in the front
of a hall. This is where the real size and the
perceived acoustic size of a hall can be made
more or less independently of each other.
A similar effect, suggesting a large space in a
small room, can be attained by adding strong
and well-delayed first reflections plus long
reverberation by electronic means. These
systems are often used by singers.
Spaciousness
A number of psycho-acoustic studies in the
1970s made it clear that it was crucial for the
perception of spaciousness a property that
makes people feel enveloped by sound that
early reflections be lateral, i.e. that there be
architectural space / The acoustic space

(Fig. 3) Musikverein Vienna, high, and not wide, to enhance intimacy and spatial hearing

56
architectural space / The acoustic space
a dissimilarity of the reflected sound at the
two ears. 1 This is perhaps the most important
property of a space for music, and more recently
has been termed binaural quality, as a result
of works by Manfred Schroeder, Harold
Marshall, Michael Barron, Yoichi Ando,
Leo Beranek and others. An index for this
property can be derived from measurements
of the cross-correlation of the sound signals
between the two ears. These findings gave a
good explanation (afterwards) of the perceived
quality of famous concert and opera halls.
What picture do we get from sounds?
The hearing mechanism is able to create a
picture (or at least a partial picture) of a
space and the position of the source of the
direct sound and early reflections. Different
positions of a listener in the space will give
different ratios between the early and the later
reflections. It is therefore definitely possible
to get a good impression of a space and its
boundaries without seeing it by walking around
blindfolded and listening.
Reflected sound with delays of more than
approximately 0.1 seconds (the sound has
travelled further than 35 metres compared to
the direct sound) is not easy to analyse. This
kind of sound may be perceived as a separate
echo (which is usually disturbing). But when
there are many reflections, more or less evenly
distributed in time, the sound will be perceived
as (late) reverberation. As been stated before,
this reverberation contains information of
the whole space and all of its boundaries, but
the density of the reflections in time tells
something of the general size and general shape
of the space, affected by the diffusiveness of the
reverberation.
The spectral composition and duration of the
reverberant sound is determined by (absorptive
and diffusive) material properties of the spaces
boundaries.
1 M. Barron. The subjective effects
of first reflections in concert halls
The need for lateral reflections, in: M. Barron and A.H. Marshall.
Journal of Sound and Vibration (1971) Spatial impression due to early lateral
April, pp. 475-494 reflections in concert halls: The
57
Reverberation, which in terms of relative
energy can be very significant, will contribute
strongly to a high tonal quality of musical
sounds, which may not always be fully
understood, but they are definitely present in
all famous concert halls and many churches.
Acoustic design
The acoustic design of concert halls is driven
by the desire to retain the information of
the musical signal (the direct sound and
early reflections, with a delay time of up to
approximately 100 milliseconds and a detour
of reflected sound less than 35 metres) and
to ensure that a sufficient blanket of late,
reverberant sound gives the musical a tonal
fullness. The preferred ratio between them
can, however, vary significantly for polyphonic
music and modern rock music, for example.
It is clear that the way music developed in time
was strongly affected by the acoustics of the
spaces that were available for playing music.
Johann Sebastian Bach composed organ music
that suited the relatively dry acoustics of the
Thomaskirche in Leipzig. Joseph Haydns
classical music suited the relatively small
and upholstered hall of Schloss Esterhzy.
Orchestras grew in size in the late 1800s
during the late romantic period, when building
technology made it possible to construct larger
halls for larger audience sizes. As a result, the
music composed in this period made use of these
halls typical acoustic properties and stronger
reverberation (see Fig. 3).
The architectural design of spaces for music in
our time is assisted, sometimes driven, by the
science of acoustics, even though it is a highly
empirical science, and the understanding of
perception is still incomplete. Some modern
designs clearly reflect the simple rules of
a preferred time delay of early reflections,
preferred reverberation and general size (see
Figs. 4 and 5).
derivation of a physical measure, in:
Journal of Sound and Vibration (1981)
July, pp. 211-232
architectural space / The acoustic space

(Fig. 4) Town Hall Christchurch (New Zealand). Typical design for strong early (lateral) reflections in a large hall.

58
architectural space / The acoustic space

(Fig. 5)

59
Iannis Xenakis. Metastaseis, 1953
A74523
in relation
to M39762
Sjoerd Soeters

61
architectural space / A74523 in relation to M39762
When the invitation reached me to write a text
on the relationship between architecture and
music, that request was accompanied by the
introduction of a mitigating circumstance. I had
already given a brief talk in the Noorderkerk
in Amsterdam to introduce the ambitious
performance of musical works covering almost
all of Western musical history, starting with
Bach and leaping forward to Iannis Xenakis
and John Cage.
In this brief introduction, I attempted to
convey to the audience at the concert how
privileged and free such a programme is in
comparison to what is considered decent and
normal in the world of architecture. In the
divided world of architecture, you have near-
religious conclaves of modern architecture
on the one side, which basically focus mainly
on avant-garde examples, and on the other
side you have the denomination of cultural
heritage conservationists, local historians,
preservation societies and so on. Both sides are
more or less subsidized, and have organized
themselves into societies with spokespersons,
writers, photographers, publishers, non-
profit association boards, subsidy review
committees, and so on and so forth. Both sides
are fairly intolerant, and anyone venturing
into the demilitarized zone between the two
entrenched viewpoints must realize the not
inconsequential danger they face. Music is
not like that; such scope, such disinterested
interest, such concentration and rapture.
The relationship between architecture
and music has already been the subject of a
great deal of writing and imagination. In my
immediate vicinity, there are also people who
occasionally, in referring to their personal
history, illuminate their multi-talented nature
by noting that they had, at some point in time,
to choose between architecture and music.
I always wonder at such moments, while
sampling their comments and wondering what
they have done up until then, whether they
would actually have made it much farther than
that if they had pursued music instead. Perhaps
these diverse individuals are those in whose
minds both disciplines have been brought to
fruition in such balance that they are able to
write an in-depth essay on the topic.
62
I am not so widely gifted. I generally try to
explain to clients and students that urban
planning and architecture are not scientific
fields of practice, that there are countless
interpretations and just as many implicit
objectives. I state on these occasions that it
certainly is not rocket science and that the
most important goal should be to keep it simple
enough for ordinary mortals such as you and
me and the average working-class stiff to
understand and appreciate.
In music, it is largely the same, with the
difference that no matter how exceptionally
serious some music may be music appears to
have been made exclusively for experience,
emotion, inspiration and pleasure. With the
exception of the ceremonial aspect, the task
of contributing colour and charm to events,
conferences, parades and marches in which
the music sets the mood of the audience, music
seems able to imagine itself free of the burdens
and limitations of functionality.
Since architecture and music exist in an equally
enormous variation and wealth of types
and appearances, shifting these reflective
counterparts closer to each other may lead to
an infinite series of inspirations, resulting in
metaphorical flights of fancy in which A20785
is associated with M69735. I hope there is a
mathematician following this, one who can
calculate the absolute number of combinations
for us. If a subsidy is available to work out
all those pairs, it would be possible to puzzle
together a thick but comprehensive standard
reference, which I will recommend to my
students. Sales are sure to be high!
Embedded in the context of my own occupation
with urban design projects, I have abandoned
the analysis of A18654 and M37659 on
the extent to which sound still resonates and
reflects in the architectural space and the space
between the notes in both architecture and
music and left that topic to its own devices.
Similarly, I have not taken up the proffered
gauntlet of A64923 in combination with
M49786, which compares the use of the term
colour in music and in architecture. However,
since we were about to listen to Bach, Iannis
Xenakis and John Cage, it seemed to me that
Power is a non-stop tape, and
architectural space / A74523 in relation to M39762

my ears are wounds. Its so

flat here. Muzak for morgues
and new buildings. Pleasantly
humming. Leaving no traces.
Blixa Bargeld. Collapsing new buildings. Lyrics, Berlin 1997.

63
What is patent in music must
architectural space / A74523 in relation to M39762

also be so in architecture.
Thus, with proportion as a
projection of the harmony of
the universe, its basis both
scientific and religious was
quite unassailable.

Colin Rowe. The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA 1987, p. 8.

64
architectural space / A74523 in relation to M39762
it would be appropriate to discuss series of
consecutive notes compared to the individual
note, trumpet blare, strike of the drum you
understand what I mean: A74523 in relation to
M39762.
As a complete layman, I experience most
classical music as a series of sounds that are
coherently connected, not only within a
measure of music, but also in the composition
in which themes are introduced, elaborated
on by various instrumental arrangements
and developed up to a climax or left endlessly
chasing its own fugue-ridden tail. In traditional
cities, this metaphor insistently comes to mind
when I walk past a series of buildings that
enclose public spaces, in which the buildings
all look a bit alike but are also a bit different
yet sufficiently similar to be in harmony.
In terms of atmosphere and mood, the series
of public spaces are the adagios, allegros and
andantes, with the exceptional structures
taking on the solos in the composition. All these
aspects, in urban architecture as in music, can
be enjoyed as a harmonious whole, both as a
total composition and in every last detail. With
or without counterpoint, it is called harmony,
cohesion.
Xenakis composes in a sort of cloud of sounds
that are so closely positioned in space, or in
time, that they can no longer be separated or
distinguished. These sound clouds could be
compared to pointillist painting (P28749);
translated into urban architecture, I would
ideally compare them to villages that have
grown organically, or phenomena like the
favelas, where countless houses stand huddled
against the hills, seemingly without structure,
hierarchy, beginning or end, at least when
viewed from a distance. The individual grains
are small, but many grains together create a
painting or a piece of music that does not lend
itself to precise definition; it is a collection, a
cloud.
I would like to place Cage at the opposite end of
the spectrum from the composers of coherence,
just as I would place modern urban architecture
opposite the classical city. In Cages music,
sounds are so far apart in type and in time that
listening to a piece can sometimes be a matter
65
of waiting for the next toot, the next piano
note or strike of the drum. Sounds here are not
structured in series; instead, they are at most
placed in series of contrast at random intervals.
In the modern city, buildings do not stand
shoulder to shoulder with their face or mask
directed towards the public space; rather, they
stand isolated in free-floating space. They can
be appreciated primarily as they stand on their
own, distinct. Their forms of expression are
iconic, autonomous, completely individual.
Cohesion is not the aim here. As in Cages
music, one might almost suspect that the
composition here could only have been created
by a toss of the dice.
Performing a piece by Cage is an exciting
experience because all conventions are set
aside; enjoying it requires considerable
concentration. The cd that I have of his music is
at my disposal; I could play it any time I like, but
I have not chosen to listen to it twice.
In areas where modern urban architecture is
practised, excursions arranged by architects
and city planners demand the same devoted
concentration. For people who live or work
there all their lives, it is generally not their first
choice.
The question that can be asked in both
architecture and music is this: how much
distance can there be between buildings and
notes, in space and in time, before cohesion
and coherence have receded so far into
the background that they can no longer be
perceived? And then: could it not be said that
cohesion is a condition of perceived beauty,
or in any case a deep and abiding desire of
mankind?
Ton Rooijmans. Graphical analysis of the composition of the Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza.
Graphical analysis of listening to architecture: horizontally, the rhythms are visible from left to right. Vertically, the
chords are visible, different elements that are accordant with one another on different levels. The further along the time
line, the more detailed the rhythms and the mutual relations.

66
Thinking
boundaries
in the
production of
architecture
and music
Jacob Voorthuis

67
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

Where does the boundary between music and
architecture lie?
Put in that way, the question makes us assume
the existence of a boundary. That might
seem self-evident a boundary between two
concepts is after all commonly demarcated by a
definition: definio in Latin means to bound, set
bounds to, limit, terminate, define. Boundaries
are drawn to mark out property for the
purposes of management and husbandry. Does
it make sense to see architecture and music as
owners of their own territory? Would such an
approach not inevitably lead to border conflicts?
Ludwig Wittgenstein advised us not to look
at the formal definition of a word but rather to
consider its actual use in our language. 1 This
essay is an attempt to answer that call. The
position it takes is that the words architecture
and music refer to specific relationships
between the human body and its environment,
and manage these relationships in the economy
of our understanding. They do this by providing
the discussion about certain processes and
their products with a network of significance,
a framework of concepts articulated against
a conceptual field that constitutes our being-
human. 2 Every instance of use has its origin
in the same source: the person making use of
something. But how are we to represent that
framework of concepts? This essay explores
the issue at the hand of the concepts tectonics,
movement and rhythm.
Nowadays we tend to think about meaning
using different metaphors from those common
during the Roman Empire: no longer as a
partitioned landscape divided into lots and
requiring border guards motivated by imperial
ambitions, but as an intimately braided virtual
network of coordinates plotting a complex
surface of concepts with which people try to
simulate reality so as to be able to use their body
well in their environment.3 This model does not
pretend to have reached any ultimate truth it
is a simulation of reality that appears to work.
The pattern formed by the connections in this
virtual network shows a certain cohesion from
the point of view of a person who is directing
his gaze outwards towards the world in which
he lives: the perspective, for example, of my
current view of architecture as a discipline, or
the perspective of your earlier view of music, in
which the various things crowding in on that
view are related to one another and measured
against one another in the play of a discussion.
Seen on the basis of such a model, there does
not need to be any boundary drawn between
architecture and music: they constitute
colourful strands within the braided continuity
of human experience. Nevertheless they can,
just like a territory, be mapped. But how?
Architecture and music are produced in
stages by the ordering of our environment
in a design (the virtual space of the drawing
or a composition), the performance (the real
or actualized space of the design made into a
building or the actual performance of a piece
of music) and the experience of these, whereby
the virtual and the real are attuned to each
other in the representation of them. 4 The point
of view of the I leads the way in this process,
by drawing things together. In discussions
with others, I disciplines the words used
in order to bring out my meaning. Music,
before it is anything else, is a word able to
shape a discussion by relating a special set of
relationships between body and environment
and thereby determining them in their
significance. The sentence this is architecture
or this is music form judgements with reference

1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1976)

Filosofische onderzoekingen
(Philosophical Investigations),
transl. Hans W. Bakx, Boom.
Originally published in 1953.
2 For holism in meaning, see Quine,
W.V.O. (1951), Two Dogmas of
Empiricism.The Philosophical
Review60: 20-43. Reprinted in his
1953From a Logical Point of View.
Harvard University Press, and
the later book Word and Object,
published in 1960.
3 This is a pragmaticist standpoint,
first elaborated by the American
philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
For an accessible explanation of
this point of view, see, among
others, Dewey, John (2005) Art and
Experience. Penguin (first published 4 For the difference between real and
in 1934). See also Shusterman, virtual space, see Summers, David
Richard, (2000) Pragmatist (2003) Real Spaces, World Art History
Aesthetics, Living Beauty, Rethinking and the Rise of Western modernism.
Art (first edition published in 1992). Phaidon.

68
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

to a special spatial experience. In the use of
such a sentence we order the tableau of the
environment we are undergoing through our
senses and measure it against our experience,
making it cohere into an experience of, in this
case, an instance of architecture or music. The
sentence, THIS is music! involves a selection
and ordering of our environment in experience;
it is the judgement of a person in a special
environment where something special is taking
place, which is clearly the focus of his attention
and which therefore guides the selection
and stitching together of the elements of the
tableau presented to his senses. However, just
because the word music denotes and judges
a special experience as being a musical one,
does not of course mean that architecture
is not simultaneously present as something
that is also being undergone. In fact, the two
are able to complement each other well and
invariably do so; the spatial experience of
beautiful music contributes to the experience
of a sublime architecture and vice versa. They
both denote and thereby manage their own
processes of production and exploration, and
do this with the single voice of our humanity,
using whatever seems useful or is known to
work effectively. Both develop within our
human capacity for exploration and the practise
of our bodies in using our environment. Man
is confined by the possibilities and limitations
of his body in organizing his experiences and
placing them within the production process of
being, such that, for example, I can say: I am
someone who likes most of Beethoven and all
of Bach and for this to mean something.5 The
senses are collectively instrumental in the
production of space. Architecture and music
are thus conceptual aspects of an I that help us
direct the special relationships between body
and environment. They are different in that
they are responsible for managing different
processes. How do we then distinguish
between the two? The distinction between the
two disciplines is made using this alternative
model in at least three ways:
1. Through the pattern that emerges when
each discipline orders the network of
concepts within the field of human usage
and the hierarchies each institutes, thereby
portraying themselves from the point of view
of the user.
2. T he instrumental concepts they each make
use of make them appealing from their own
user perspective.
3. T hrough the way the disciplines come
together, assembling around a particular
event and then, so to speak, do their own
thing, as for example with the theme death
or marriage, themes that have a musical as
well as an architectural dimension in the
continuity of space.
Id like to elaborate on the first two, leaving the
last to your own imagination.
First distinction: the portraying of a discipline
The philosopher Roman Ingarden asked
himself the question: where is music situated?6
Can we localize music? That turns out to be
rather difficult; it is much easier, on reflection,
to show where it is not. With regard to the
place of music in the environment, it is clear
that music cannot be situated on the page
where it appears encoded in the form of musical
notation which, with the right interpretation
and the help of a musical instrument as well as
a practiced musician, might lead to music. In
this way we can point out the various stages of a
musical experience where the music manifests
itself in the form of something it cannot be
said to be: a vibration, an echo, a memory
of a movement, an analogy or a coded aid to
memory within the environment to be called
up. Nowhere here is it localized as a momentary
feeling or the celebration of movement in being
moved. And if the production of music requires
a pattern of air vibrations to penetrate the
body through its ears, its stretched skin and
its muscles, what then? Can we localize music

6 Ingarden, Roman (1989), Ontology

5 Johnson, Mark (2007) The Meaning
of the Body: Aesthetics of Human
Understanding. University of
Chicago Press.
of the Work of Art, transl. Raymond
Meyer & John T. Goldthwait.
Ohio State University Press. First
versions of this work were written
in the 1930s.

69
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music
in the body? Not, in any case, as vibrations in
the air those are and remain mere vibrations.
Even with a pattern, they do not yet constitute
music. Those patterns must be translated
by the ear and the brain into sound, a purely
psychosomatic phenomenon, and this is then
distilled into music through skilful and well-
practised feeling, a knowing enjoyment or even
a resolute distaste.
Neurological studies increasingly show that the
construction of music lies in the coordinated
effort of the different parts of the brain. The
cerebellum, the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex
and various other parts work together, one
measuring rhythm and beat, another producing
a primal emotional judgement that is later
reassessed and nuanced in the cerebral cortex
in the light of an individuals experience.7 The
enjoyment of music takes shape in conducted
feeling and motor movement, a dextrous and
elegant movement that carries a proprioceptive
component that in turn transfers meaning
back into the environment. As such, music
itself is not the feeling or the movement that music
inspires. Music cannot be localized in the body;
as it concerns a concerted play of the body in
its environment, it concerns a reciprocal game
in which the I coordinates and determines the
relationship between the two. Music might be
better conceived as a word with which a set of
correlative relations between the body and its
environment is denoted and given character
and cohesion. Music is an aspect of the I that
can make statements such as I think this is music.
In this statement, the word never transcends
its status as an abstraction, a virtual pattern
articulated upon a field of concepts; the feeling,
the enjoyment, the movement, the sound, the
memory, the experience have to be brought
together and conducted in the production
of music as if they together constituted a
symphony orchestra of connected elements
playing together. And if the experience
of undergoing music is practised well and
succeeds, then we arrive at the judgement: Ah!
What beautiful music. The fact that many people
8 Hillier, Bill (1999), Space is the
7 Levitin, Daniel J. (2006), This is Machine: A Configurational Theory of
Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Architecture. Cambridge University
Human Obsession. Dutton. Press.
70
use this judgment to refer to very different
experiences in fact reinforces the view proposed
here.Music isnt a thing, it is a judgment upon
an event in the environment in which the body
finds itself.
Is that any different for architecture? No it
isnt. Architecture also refers to a word with
which the process, that is the design process,
the process of making and the process of spatial
experience together lead to the product that
is architecture, such as a well or badly judged
design, a somatic memory of a space, perhaps
expressed by appreciation, perhaps even
articulated as a refined critical judgement, but
usually cherished in silence in the form of a
happy familiarity or intimacy, a well-practised
space, a space I know and can do.8
The bodys answer to music is a feeling; it is
laughter, tears, deep joy and the smouldering
simulation of wintery melancholy; it is dance,
expression, movement, the rocking and the
gestures of the body. The bodys answer to
architecture is the movement through, alongside,
over, under, in and out, a place-related and
place-determining act, the orientation of the
body to light, sound and sight. Music manifests
itself as a somatic answer to sound, and that
is no different for architecture. Architecture
manifests itself in the bodily answer to a
spatial package of boundaries that architecture
coordinates or manages in perception and
discussion. Music as a term manages the bodily
production of musical rhythm in movement
and emotion while architecture concerns the
bodily production of social space (let us not
forget here that space in the work of Immanuel
Kant refers first and foremost to the organizing
and portraying capacity of the human mind,
a space that, without this filtering and
therefore determining aspect of our perceptive
capabilities, we would never be able to know).9
The body learns to recognize rhythm, timbre,
meter, harmony and melody so as to bring them
into coordinated play, and it practises them
9 Lefebvre, Henri (1991), The
Production of Space, transl. Donald
Nicholas-Smith. Blackwell.
I've always thought that it
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

would be very difficult to do

in architecture what some
contemporary composers
have suggested in music, to
have rotating players, to have
players interpret, and yet I
think what architecture can
do is involve the audience in
it.
Daniel Libeskind. Interview on bbc Radio. 4 August 2002.

71
As something becomes a
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

form it occupies a certain

space; it has form, a
condensation, so as not to be
shattered all over in particles
something personal and
individual. Automatically,
time occurs in a being, but the
being isnt in time.

Jonathan Cott. Stockhausen: conversations with the composer. London 1973, p 165.

72
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

to an apex of refinement, thus producing the
experience of music. 10 The body thus explores
its possibilities. In this way, the construction
of music may be said to be a compositional and
explorative capacity situated in the responsive
movements and judgements of the body that
answers sound as music.
Second distinction: the use of concepts,
phonotectonics, movement, rhythm
The musical instrument is responsible for
the sound and especially for the timbre and
behaviour of the sound it produces when played.
Architecture is also an instrument: the sound
produced by a violin is always further shaped by
the material and space of the environment it is
played in. Phonotectonics is concerned with the
way that materials come into relationship with
one another so that they help determine the sound
we hear. 11 The sound produced by our bodies
allows us to initiate the production of meaning
with phrases such as: Who is this bathroom tenor
I keep hearing? Sound is the product of our body
in the translation of air vibrations that are
formed when materials come together. When
two materials are conjoined in a construction
or its cladding they make meaning possible.
This aspect of architecture is called tectonics,
from the Greek word tekton, carpenter.
Tectonics constitutes a sub-discipline within
architectural design that concerns itself
specifically with the making, that is, the choice
and articulation of materials when related to
questions about the environment, the situation
and the desired programme of a projected
design: in short it concerns the selection,
placement and configuration of materials
to create a good space. 12 Through tectonics,
music and architecture meet in the concept
of space. Paul Valry remarked that a person
experiencing music is necessarily immersed in
both. A good example of this is the work Forty
Part Motet (2001) by the Canadian artist Janet
Cardiff. She took each voice from Thomas
Tallis Spem in Alium nunquam habui, and
recorded it individually so that each voice could
be given its own speaker within a space. Visitors
to the installation could walk through the space
and experience the music either as a whole
or they could privilege an individual singer,
depending on where they stood in the room
and how they moved through it. Architecture
and music are immersive, spatial arts. Music
is not the product of one resonance box, the
instrument, but a Russian nesting doll of sound
boxes, of which the ear and the stretched skin of
the body are only the last before the vibrations of
air and membrane are translated into electrical
impulses and transformed into experience.
This nested series of sound boxes is subject to
architectonics and to phonotectonics. A special
example of architecture and music as tectonics
in tune with one another is the Vithala Temple
in Hampi. It is a musical temple in the most
literal sense of the word. The story (of which
there are a number) is that the temple was built
in honour of a dancer whose movements were so
spell-binding that the local lord decided to build
a space as a musical instrument to accompany
her dance. The pillars of the peristylium are
designed as stone chimes. This story produces
both the architecture and the music.
This confluence of music, dance and
architecture reveals, by way of movement,
what may be the most beautiful relationship
between music and architecture, namely that
they are not just immersive spatial arts but that
they are special because of the way they each
answer movement in their own way. Dance is
the somatic and spatial answer to music; it is the
production of space in movement, the answer
to sound, rhythm, metre, harmony and melody.
The body lets itself move and be moved by music
and thus makes music spatial not only by making
it visible, but also tangible, in the rocking,
stretching, bending, proprioceptive body and
giving order to the place where the dance occurs.
Experience is the answer of motion to emotion.
Architecture is evident here in a number of

12 Voorthuis, J.C.T. (2007)

10 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Culture and
Value, edited by G.H. von Wright,
transl. by Peter Wynch. 1980, pp. 51
and 70.
11 This word comes from Schott,
Gaspar(1677), Magia universalis
natur et artis.
Tektoniek, een essay over het
maken van een relatie (Tectonics,
an essay about the making of a
relationship). De Architect, Volume
38, December, 2007, pp. 116-19.

73
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music
ways. Architecture is, as we have seen, itself
an instrument of sound. A Stradivarius is the
instrument that gives a form to the vibration
of strings. The architecture in which the
Stradivarius is played does no different and
compounds the result. It determines the
manner in which these vibrations work in
space, and thus determines the way the body
picks them up. 13 But that is only the beginning.
Architecture as a built structure is a composed
package of borders such as walls, openings,
divisions and filters through which the body
moves according to the rhythm of its own
workings. The composition of surfaces and
frames through which the body moves knows
two aspects, namely the composition of those
areas and frames, designed by the architect,
and the perception of that composition in the
moving body that thereafter reconstructs
the composition of the architect into its own
experiential architectural composition. To
arrive at the production of space, that is to
say, the production of architecture, a moving
body must answer the buildings call through
his experience of it. The motion of the body
through the space of the building causes the
static structure to move in our experience of
it through the dynamics of sound, the spatial
location of those sounds, the succession and
meeting of colours and textures, light and
shade and objects. The organization and
continual composition of views and mutually
shifting frames make the walk through the
architecture, the route architecturale, a musical
experience in that the experience becomes a
composition. Architecture is an experience in
which the body moves and is therefore moved.
Music is the bodily emotion that moves the
body.
We can make this argument more specific.
Music has rhythmic qualities. So does
architecture. Rhythm is immediately
perceivable in music; it is perhaps its most
elementary aspect, or in any case its most
convincing call to movement. How does
architecture use rhythm? In two ways. When
architects design a faade, they can do so
by considering the building linearly. The
13 See Louis Kahns 1960 poem, Order is.
74
faade of Palladios Basilica thus becomes
a rhythmic composition when one reads its
sequence of columns, entablatures, openings
and projections from left to right or the other
way around. We can teach ourselves that kind
of reading; it takes practice and refinement.
However, architectures rhythmic aspect goes
much further than that. After all, a person has
to move through space; the movement creates
a second more profound rhythmic experience:
the rhythmic stride past shifting surfaces,
the rhythm of openings, and the sequence
of volumes, etc. But it is yet more complex.
I compose my experience by turning my gaze
during my motion through the building. That
creates architecture as a temporal experience
of superimposed fragmented images braided
into continuity. However, even that is only
half of the story. The experience becomes
richer when my eyes and ears, taste and smell
work together, and when the experience can be
practised a second or third time, each measured
against the earlier, thus making it grow in
wealth and refinement. Every building is a
unique sensual composition that is determined
situationally by a concrete person: composed by
them into an experiential event in the form of a
portrait.
Conclusion: the new map
In their use, the words architecture and music
coordinate discussions about the production of
space. That production consists of the design,
the performance, the perception and, above
all, their reciprocal dependence. Thus they
coordinate or manage not so much a territory
as a process of production, each making use
of the entire human capacity to take in our
environment and compose it according to the
focus of our attention, whether that be the
experience of architectonic space and/or that
of musical space. Both words form an aspect of
human enterprise as a whole, the exploratory
capacity of people to put their own bodies and
environment to use for the purposes of growth,
self-maintenance, reflection, exercise or
practise and development.
architectural space / Thinking about boundaries in the production of architecture and music

If we want to map architecture and music, we
end up with a diagrammatic scheme in which
the experience of a person takes up a central
position, allowing itself to be differentiated
only in order to answer that experience in
some action, thought and/or movement. In the
most literal sense we arrive at a pragmatism,
from the Greek work , or act. The
words architecture and music form a finely-
woven, delicate and changeable network of
virtual relationships in which concept and
interpretation become possible in discourse
such that they offer direction to the act of
design, composition, performance and
experience.
The model offered here as an alternative does
not prohibit us to see music and architecture in
the old way. That would reinstall the famous
paragone, a conversation game based on a
playful rivalry between disciplines demanding
skilful and opportunistic border controls and
military prowess that, however, inevitably
partitions the continuity of human experience
in order to control and rule. From the point of
view offered here, that becomes unnecessary.
The difference is now constituted in the way
that, for example, different kinds of tools and
their particular uses develop to work together
at something that is the product in which they
all play a part. Tools, material, knowledge and
expertise assemble around a challenge the
making of a cupboard, for example and are
then all used by a person according to their
specific abilities or suggested possibilities,
each requiring their own movements and each
judged according to their own criteria of finish
and excellence, but all working towards a single
product: the cupboard. Words and their use
are, according to this analogy, the tools and at
the same time the material as well as the skill
to employ them in relation to the challenge
to be captured in words: an experience.
They come together around a discussion or
a description and take their proper place; in
this way they form a complete and carefully
braided event with meaning, an experience of
meaning carefully positioned in the light of the
experience of being human and making a well-
reasoned attitude possible.
The pattern that the abstraction architecture
creates in servicing the coherence it attempts
to maintain and develop between various
concepts that call it to use, shares coordinates
with the field of concepts that is called up by the
abstraction music, though not all of them; most
importantly, they both look at the concepts
from their own desired purpose and their
own experience. That difference creates the
possibility that they each make use of the same
concepts in their own way. Both disciplines,
for example, use the verb to compose, but they
each compose using a different set of conceptual
instruments, their own repertoire of means
and materials in the service of their own
desired goals and on the basis of the specialized
competency of the user. There is, however,
something strange about the singularity of
these concepts, means and goals: they do not
belong to the discipline, there is no ownership
here that would grant exclusive privilege to a
particular use. It points rather to a singularity
in the use of shared means. To illustrate with a
simple example, it is not the sound or a material
that belongs either to architecture or music,
it is the use that is made of it in experience
that determines the distinction. Using the
word architecture, we search for the space of
architecture and bring it up for discussion, and
with the word music, we, in fact, do much the
same but then in search for the space of music.

75
76
Musical
approaches
to space
Machiel Spaan

77
architectural space / Musical approaches to space
You can understand space by interacting with
the environment with your whole body. Feel
the city, the building and the space with all of
your senses, just like the craftsmen who use
their entire body to build, nail and paint it. Let
all of your perceptions work together towards
this: measure the space with your strides; smell
the trees, the streets, the rain; feel the handrail,
the doorknob and the wall; sense your weight
on a hill or a staircase.
In the introduction to his book The Eyes of the
Skin, Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa asks
the following: Architecture has the capacity of
being inspiring, engaging and life-enhancing.
But why is it that architectural schemes which
look good on the drawing board or the computer
screen can be so disappointing in the flesh?
This question is the beginning of a call to break
through the domination of visual experience
and the designers focus on formal solutions.
Pallasmaa urges architects to use all of their
senses when making a design. The interaction
between the design and smell, feel, taste, sight
and sound creates a deeper and more authentic
experience of space.
78
The Music, Space and Architecture research
project at the Academy of Architecture aims to
guide students to discover space anew. Various
design projects on a number of scales research
the way sound, alongside familiar parameters
such as usage and technology, can influence a
design task, process and the resulting spatial
design.
Using an analysis of sound as the starting point
for a design assignment confronts students
with a more layered spatial experience.
The goal is to bring students to an awareness of
the meaning of sound in the spatial experience
of the city, the street, a place and space.
From this new awareness, spatial designs
incorporate parameters beyond the visual. This
generates different descriptions, definitions
and notations of space and spatial experience.
It offers experiences that are not always
obvious. The assignments force students to
adopt an investigative attitude and lead to more
comprehensive spatial insight and awareness.
It is a journey towards the musical approach of
space.
architectural space / Musical approaches to space
The proportions of a space
One often-cited similarity between
musical composition and spatial design is
the application of the rules of proportions.
Harmonic relationships and orders play an
important role in both disciplines. Pythagoras
and later Plato already developed the idea
that the beauty of both music and architecture
comes from their use of correct proportions.
In the 1951 lecture by Dom Hans van der
Laan, entitled Muziek en Architectuur (Music
and Architecture), he suggests that a thorough
knowledge of music offers great advantages
to the architect. Van der Laan seeks the
ultimate dimensional system. 1 In the lecture,
he compares a number of pitch systems and
describes how they deal with the perpetual
area of tension between structure (harmony)
and the atmosphere (melody) of a piece of
music. Van der Laan compares this area of
tension to a theme from architecture: the
construction (tectonics) of a building, the
relationship between structure (construction)
and its appearance (image). The widening and
narrowing of end- or mid-spans, the addition
of friezes and cornices, the installation of
capitals and podiums are all procedures that
create differences through the addition of
elements, that bring the building and its parts
to light. Dom Hans van der Laan invites a
design attitude where the tensions between
construction and image be accepted and used in
the expression of the building. Van der Laans
inspiration for his own system of dimensions
is derived from pitch systems and harmonic
approaches in music. He goes further in
translating them into architecture than simply
using the rules of proportions. His principles
represent an attitude towards building itself,
one that suggests that the appearance of a
building springs from the structure, the
construction and the detail.
2 Sterken, S. The thoughts of Xenakis
and the relation between his music and
1 Van der Laan, Dom H. Muziek en architecture, lecture May 27, 2010
Architectuur, lecture on September at the Amsterdam Academy of
15-16, 1951 in s-Hertogenbosch. Architecture Amsterdam.
79
For the 1958 World Expo pavilion in Paris,
Iannis Xenakis used a mathematical formula
that he had deployed earlier in composing the
piece Metastasis. He projected this formula both
on time and space; not only in music, but also in
architecture.
The mathematical proportions are translated
into music and architecture. Not in a scientific
way, but in an intuitive way. Xenakis used the
mathematics as a generator of creativity, as
architecture historian Sven Sterken describes
it. 2
Xenakis also worked on the faades of the La
Tourette monastery, in which he explored
rhythmic patterns. Here his inspiration was
the numerical proportions he had used in the
orchestral work Le Sacrifice. In a first design he
tried to give the faade a rhythm using a direct
translation of the rhythm of the musical piece.
But this concept led to a boring and predictable
division of windows. Fed by his intuition,
he translated the rhythm on a more abstract
level. He replaced rhythm with density. In the
faade, this led to window mullions that are
at times closer and other times further from
one another. From that moment, the design
question was no longer about the individual
distance of each mullion from the next, but
much more about zones of greater or lesser
density. This allowed Xenakis to give himself
the poetic freedom to play with the rhythm.
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

The design assignment Ruimte

(Space) by architect Claudia
Schmidt and architect/
musician Jurgen Stoye starts
for every student with the
analysis of a piece of music,
such as Phase Patterns by
Steve Reich or the violin
concerto Tabula Rasa by Arvo
Prt. Series of rhythmic and
tectonic models represent
flowing and short rhythms,
staccatos and harmonies.
Each student distils the
building blocks from each
musical piece in an intuitive
way. These musical building
blocks are then translated
into architectonic ones and
then combined into greater
parts so as finally to create
an architectonic space.
The repetition of building
blocks creates the basis for
the resulting pavilions. The
designs go beyond the formal
picture. The form comes to life
through the combination of its
discovered parts. This creates
fascinating spaces where
repetition, rhythm, layering,
light, shadow and texture
play an important role. The
parts (building blocks) and the
whole (the space) complement
one another. The musical
composition is transformed
into a tectonic structure.

Jasper ten Bosch

80
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

The movement in a space

An etymological dictionary describes space
as a place in which to move. Movement
stimulates spatial experience. Without
movement, the picture easily remains two-
dimensional. Movement happens in time, and
it is time that connects architecture and music.
Both movement through space and listening
to music happen in time. In his essay Muziek
en Architectuur (Music and Architecture), Jan
Hoogstad describes spatial experience thus:
The observer notices image shifts through
movement and it is specifically those shifts
that are responsible for the sensation of space.
In the spatial experience, observers combine
the image they just saw with the one they see
now. They combine an image memory with the
perceived image, resulting in a spatial effect.
In music, there are similar effects and one
composes them on purpose.3 The inspiration
for his research into sound and space was the
realization that a conversation about spatial
experience always ends in a discussion of the
appearance of space-determining elements,
when in fact it should centre on the space
between them. To break this discussion open,
Hoogstad asks himself the question of how to
discuss space when the visual aspect is taken
out of the equation.

3 Jan Hoogstad, Muziek en

architectuur, een theoretische
beschouwing over de relatie tussen
geluid en ruimte (Music and
Architecture, a theoretical vision of
the relationship between sound and
space), in Wiederhall 1988, no. 10,
pp.30-33.

81
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Jan Richard Kikkert

and Lars van Ess design
assignments start at a location
in Amsterdam. Students
study specific urban spaces
of transition based on their
quality of sound. They listen
to the place, and the sound
experiences are taken up
in the design. In a number
of cases, this even leads to
experiments where the visual
is completely eliminated.

Jan Richard Kikkerts

assignment Soundscape
explores how sounds collected
in a space can be transformed
with the help of models and
drawings. The discoveries
are used for the design of an
Acoustic Research Centre
as an extension of the Arcam
Architecture Centre. In one
of the plans, new public routes
are conceived that encircle
the building from within and
without, creating an endless
movement. Perforations in the
walls that generate an ever-
present wind sound ensure
that the routes are also audible.
Fixed and undetermined
places for the visitor to
wander create this new urban
landscape and they encourage
an improvisatory use and Narda Beunders
discovery of urban space.

82
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Lars van Ess Sonic Transitions

assignment aims to create
urban dwellings from the
sound discoveries. These
are spatial sequences in
which environmental sound
has a great influence on the
experience of space and use of
materials in these spaces. The
results are sound fragments,
spatial models and scenarios
that together create the whole
of every design. Spatial routes
that cross one another through
parts of the structure make
up the design. Every part of
the structure highlights a
different auditory quality of
the environment as a part of
the specific spatial experience.
There are spaces that capture
sound and spaces that hold it
captive. These spaces create
an exciting ambiguity in the
transition from outside to
inside.

Chris Verstappen

83
architectural space / Musical approaches to space
Aldo van Eyck is always searching for
indeterminate space in his work. As, for
example, in his design for the Orphanage,
where he took the lead from Bachs fugues.
The overlaps in the square plans, shifting
relative to one another, are the in-between
spaces that the programme rubs up against and
where people come together. It is ambiguous
space that is not directly defined, space that
does not have its own walls. In Aldo van
Eycks playground design for Amsterdam,
this ambiguity also plays a role. Van Eyck
consciously makes no division between the
playground and the street, between sandbox
and grass. He wants to teach children how they
should deal with these ambiguous transitions in
urban space. It awakens curiosity, challenges
and allows children to experience the space
and boundaries. Other users, teenagers and
grownups, are likewise encouraged to use the
space. This increases the interaction between
the neighbourhood inhabitants.
4 Richard Sennett. The Craftsman.
Amsterdam 2008, pp. 260-264, 302.
84
The space is delimited by other means: the
yells of children, the feel of the soil, benches
for the elderly. Richard Sennett describes
the multipurpose spatial character, or Van
Eyck's playgrounds, in detail in his book
The Craftsman and concludes that it is the
choreography of movement and the contact and
awareness ceremonies that make Van Eycks
playgrounds so special.4 It allows children
to learn in play and they are encouraged to do
so together. These ceremonies take place in
the ambiguous space that is not determined
by physical boundaries. The design of them
requires more than merely a visual approach.
Feeling, but certainly also hearing, provide an
interesting input. This kind of spatial design
does more than facilitate use. It creates areas
with space for meeting, improvisatory use and
unexpected movement.
Wir verstehen im
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Allgemeinen Architektur
nicht mehr, wenigstens
lange nicht in der Weise,
wie wir Musik verstehen. ...
Und noch jetzt mchte man
fragen: wen unsere neuere
Musik die Steine bewegen
knnte, wrde sie diese zur
einer antiken Architektur
zusammensetzen?
Friedrich Nietzsche. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches Ein Buch fr freie Geister. Leipzig 1878 -1880, p. 112.

85
Space is in our experience
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

equal to place, and the time is

equal to the moment.

Aldo van Eyck. The playgrounds and the city. Rotterdam 2002, p 15.

86
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Space for encounter plays

a key role in the graduation
project entitled Space in Four
Parts by Kim Verhoeven at
the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture in July 2011. She
observed that contemporary
concert halls are increasingly
box-inside-a-box buildings. As
a result, the relation between
performer and listener has
become static. The building
designed by Kim creates space
for new relations between the
audience, the performer and
the surroundings in which
they take place. The design
for a transportable concert
hall consists of four precisely
detailed modules that can
connect to one another in
different ways so that a wide
range of concert halls are
possible. At each location the
building can engage with its
surroundings in a new way,
and also engineer another
relation between performer
and listener. The lightness
and dynamism of the designs
spatial elaboration yields
ambiguous space for numerous Kim Verhoeven
interpretations and types of
use. Without imposing itself,
the building establishes a
genuine interaction between
the listener, the performer and
the surroundings.

87
architectural space / Musical approaches to space
The intrinsic space
In 1961, Danish architect and teacher Steen
Eiler Rasmussen wrote the book Experiencing
Architecture. He too calls for the use of all
senses in the design of buildings. One chapter
is dedicated to sound and hearing. Rasmussen
invites a renewed acoustic experience in
architecture, one that has been lost. We make
every house and every space practically the
same acoustically. Rasmussen is concerned
with what a renewed awareness can mean for
spatial experience. Every material and every
texture and form reflects sound differently and
lends each space a character all of its own.
In the book, Rasmussen describes an imaginary
visit to a stately home from the baroque: When
you move through a large house from that
5 Steen Eiler Rasmussen. Architectuur
Beleven. Amsterdam 1959.
88
period, you experience a series of chambers
that are also finely differentiated in an acoustic
sense. You start at the entrance gate, then come
into a stone vestibule with a staircase, which
must have had a particular sound atmosphere,
the swords clanking as they were removed and
piled up, and when the head steward hit the
ground with his staff to announce the visitors.
From there you come into chambers with a
more musical sound: a large hall and salons with
panels with fabric-covered medallions, with a
relatively short echo and at the same time a good
resonance for chamber music because of the
amount of wood. A cabinet where a spinet could
be well appreciated and finally the boudoir, a
closed box of panels and furnishings, a room for
an intimate conversation and whispers.5
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

In Jarrik Ouburgs design

assignment, The House of
Sound, the starting point is
the design of various acoustic
spaces. The task involves a
music building with various
halls for different kinds of
performances. A relationship
is set up between the musical
dependence on sound and
silence, and the architectonic
dependence on mass and space.
The designs explore this
mutual relationship and make
it tangible. It is an exploration
of form, the proportions and
the materials of each specific
space.

Txell Blanco Diaz

89
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Pauline Degrand

90
architectural space / Musical approaches to space
In his lecture Atmospheres, Peter Zumthor
describes nine architectonic aspects of his
work.6 The third aspect concerns the sound
of a space. He describes interiors as large
instruments that collect sound, amplify it and
diffuse it to other places. The intrinsic acoustic
quality of the space depends on the shape of
the space and the way that materials are used.
In this way, every space makes its own sound.
There are many buildings with their own
fantastic and valuable sound that makes you feel
at home. Finally, he remembers the intimate,
familiar sounds of his childhood: creaking
floors, wind over the rooftop, the sound of
his mother in the kitchen. Zumthors space is
an intimate, protective place where you can
be yourself. Where you can feel safe, where
you know not only the colours, textures and
smells, but also the sounds. A specific space for
a specific use, for a specific user and at a specific
spot. Designing such places is about intuitively
recognizing specific characteristics, about the
craft of translating these into space with the
right materials and put together in the right
way. It is a design approach that is reflected
in the resulting building, not literally, not in
image, but tucked away in the tectonics, the
material and the atmosphere of the structure.
7 Brandon Labelle, Een andere
6 Peter Zumthor. Atmospheres, lectures akoestiek (A different acoustics), in
given in Basel 2006. OASE 78, pp. 14-23.
91
Discovering space
In every project, the students explore and
design space with intrinsic, unique qualities.
Sound is the catalyst for the design, but
touch, light, shadow and orientation also
have a meaning. It is space that comes from a
process of listening, creating, anticipating and
reflecting, from a need to make sound a real part
of the design, and to make the visual image the
result of an auditory and sensual exploration.
Thus the image is only a result instead of a
goal in the design process. Not surprisingly,
it generates images that we do not yet know,
ones that surprise us. Sound artist Brandon
LaBelle points this out in oase 78: If sound
and architecture have more to offer one another
than strictly acoustics, then it is perhaps in
the area of adding ambiguity to the strictly
functional and spatial program of architecture.
What excites me about this is the suggestion
that if architecture works with sound such
that the placement of acoustic installations
come first, it has the benefit of breaking
down many of its assumptions and considers
sound by its own specifications. I believe
that would generate something that does not
resemble much of what weve come to know in
architecture.7
In all these designs, formal meaning moves to
the background. This means that we must also
look at them with different eyes. These are
therefore design results not only to observe, but
also to feel, discover, listen to and smell. Juhani
Pallasmaa writes about the measurable and
indefinite in the Poetics of Space. More than only
providing physical protection, a building must
also have a soul that can be felt by all the senses
together.8
This reaches to the core of architecture. Each
design has the goal of coming alive through
people, who must therefore make architecture
their own, and also vice versa: the architecture
must win people over. That requires more than
a good-looking space. All the senses play a role,
certainly also listening.
8 Juhani Pallasmaa. Mental and
existential ecology. In: The Poetics of
Space. Boston 1994, pp. 179-187.
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Pnina Avidars project Klinkt

bekend (Sounds familiar)
explores the relationship
between sonic experiences of
everyday sounds, the notation
of these sonic experiences and
the relationship between the
experience and architectonic
space. He started by studying
and taking note of ordinary
sounds in his house. This led
to unusual notations of space.
These notations generate new
authentic inspirations. Using
these notations in the design
process as inspiration creates
designs where space is freed
from a preconceived visual
language. The constructed
and composed spaces have
a different, sound-related
quality. The designs are very
contextual and based on routes
and movements, and they also
express these.

Jasper Smits

92
architectural space / Musical approaches to space

Ninja Zurheide

93
94
Three
compositions
for
the
Noorderkerk
Berend Jan Bockting

95
experimental space / Music, Space & Architecture
As a composer it doesnt often
happen that youre asked to
create music for a specific
space. This rare assignment
was given to three young
and talented composers
by Jurriaan Rntgen of
Noorderkerkconcerten
to celebrate its tenth
anniversary. The composers
Trevor Grahl, Rens Tienstra
and Max Knigge all created a
piece that was only intended
for and performed in the
Noorderkerk in Amsterdam.
Before and after their
music was performed they
contemplated on the synergy
between music, space and
architecture in relation to
their work.
96
A composer cant ordinarily
choose the space in which his
music is performed, and in
most cases he wont be familiar
with it. But space is important
to them, says 26-year-old
Trevor Grahl. Its not just a
big room. You have to learn
how it sounds. Compare it
to a musical instrument, for
example. The first resonating
chamber of an instrument, a
violin for instance, is the violin
itself. This is a very important
part of its sound. The place
where a musician is playing
can be considered a second
resonating chamber.
After reading The Tuning of the
World by R. Murray Schafer,
Grahl became acutely aware of
a rooms function in relation to
sound. Your room at home, for
instance, probably has a lot of
acoustic absorbing fabric, so I
can hear you when you speak,
he says. For this project he
wanted to let people hear the
idioms of the space by setting
up musicians throughout
the church. A lot of pieces
do this, but most of those
pieces are about the space, not
about the music. I wanted to
write a piece thats musically
interesting too.
Grahl had to be a bit unruly to
stay true to his own method
of work. The Academy of
Architecture conducted a
study about the Noorderkerks
acoustics. They determined
that it wasnt good for fast
tempo music, so I thought:
it has to be perfect for fast
tempo music. These studies
are usually conducted from a
traditional mindset. My piece
is very fast everything fuses
into one thing. Of course this
kind of tempo wouldnt be
right for Bach because you
cant hear the clarity, but
thats assuming that clarity is
more important than anything
else.
Grahl admits he was a bit
shocked when he entered the
Noorderkerk for the first time.
Its so Calvinistic: all work,
no pleasure. The walls are big
and white, and I wanted to fill
everything with sound.
One of the things he
discovered early on was the
effect of getting the musicians
to play woodwinds behind the
doors of three smaller rooms
connected with the main space
of the church. Behind closed
doors, it made them not only
sound quiet, he says, but also
like their sound is coming from
somewhere deep inside the
building. I wanted to create
something that had so much
sound inside, that if you didnt
have anything to look at
keeping in mind the Calvinist
interior of the church you
would learn to watch the
music.
Before the performance,
he tweaked some early
recordings he made in the
church with his computer by
inserting a cathedral reverb.
Thats when he learned that
its impossible to exactly
recreate the dynamics of sound
within a space. Its really
about the building. During the
performance I hid the string
players behind the wooden
wall surrounding the centre
of the church space, and it
sounded like they we were in
a different room. You could
hear that there was an object
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Trevor Grahl. Musician placement in the Noorderkerk for Metaxa, 2010

97
experimental space / Music, Space & Architecture

Rens Tienstra. Canti Spezzati, 2010 (sketch)

98
Whether the music of
experimental space /Music, Space & Architecture

a region developed as
predominantly melodic
or rhythmic depends on
whether the race of people
were historically housed or
unhoused, dwelling in reed huts
or in tents, in houses of wood or
stone, in houses and temples
high vaulted or low roofed, of
heavily furnishings
or light.
Wallace Sabine: Buildings for music cited by Michael Forsyth 1985, p.3.

99
The acoustic behaviour
experimental space / Music, Space & Architecture

of caves lends itself to the

evolution of melodic music.
The relative lack of acoustic
reflection afforded to people
who lived outside or in huts
lent itself to the evolution
of predominantly rhythmic
music.

Wallace Sabine: In the place of sound cited by David Prior 2007, p.126.

100
experimental space /Music, Space & Architecture
that coloured and shaded the
sound source, like a filter. By
having the woodwinds in the
other rooms, their sound was
literally taken by the room.
You couldnt simulate that in
any other way. You had to be
in the church, in that space, to
experience that.
Grahls main goal was to
teach people to see music,
without being able to see
the musicians. He smiles:
Ironically, they were looking
at the space, which blended
well with the subject of this
project. Its interesting that
we live in a culture where
you dont have to see the
source of the sounds you hear.
Theyre just there, on the
radio, in the supermarket
everywhere. But when you
have real musicians play real
music people have different
expectations. When they hear
sound played by real musicians
who cant be seen, they act
in complete surprise: wow,
whats happening?
Twenty-three year old Rens
Tienstra wanted to use the
space as an additional
instrument for his
composition, which focused on
a choir spread throughout the
church. To him, thinking
about space while composing
music is not unique. I think
the overall picture is very
important. The position of a
reading desk, for instance. Or
a musicians outfit. The way
coffee tastes during the break.
I try to devote attention to
every seemingly unimportant
detail.
101
But when your music is
performed in a church, he
continues, you have to use
the space, since the space has
an influence on the music,
whether you like it or not.
The Noorderkerks acoustics
are obviously not suited for
chamber music that would
just fade away in space. But
its perfect for large fields
of sound. One of the ways
in which Tienstra used the
space was by composing the
4.6-second church reverb in
his work. On another level
he created, like Grahl, an
unorthodox set-up for his
musicians.
But unlike Grahl, Tienstra
wanted movement on stage.
Having singers all over the
place immediately created a
feeling of space. The audience
didnt know where to look,
before even one tone of music
had been played.
Also, movement throughout
the space added an extra
dimension to his piece. During
the concert the choir started
to sing in small groups,
after which each member
disappeared behind the choir
pews, until one person was left
in the middle. Thats where
the impact of this huge space
could really be felt, Tienstra
says. It was a beautiful image:
you could still hear the others
while the last choir member
stood there all alone. Thats
how I constructed a certain
social space. The song, which
is about the darker side of
love, starts with a large group
and ends with one person
who is left alone. Ive never
been so close to creating
a composition with such
political significance.
Tienstra learned to make use
of silence in the church, since
silence takes up a certain space
too. One of the lecturers
before the concert said
churches are the guardians of
silence, Tienstra says. That
really stuck with me. If you
wander through a crowded
city like Amsterdam, walking
inside a church makes all
sound disappear. The space
is not defenceless against
all the sound on the outside.
As a composer you kind of
battle this silence. Silence has
become an increasingly more
important subject to me when I
write music.
 matin, temps electrique
experimental space / Music, Space & Architecture 11
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Max Knigge. Matin, temps electrique: for small choir and peculiar orchestra, 2010 (page from score)

102
experimental space /Music, Space & Architecture
While Grahl and Tienstra let
themselves be inspired by the
church space, 26-six year old
Max Knigge didnt want to
create any music specifically
for the space. Im an intuitive
composer, he says. I was
more inspired by the idea and
tradition of the church than by
the space itself. Churches still
have a very nice old romantic
feeling to me. The romance of
the Middle Ages knights and
armour if you like.
His musical approach was
also more classical than his
two colleagues as well. The
famous church reverb doesnt
work well with rhythmic
details. When you play fast
music the sounds disappear.
But it works really well if
you play music with more
weight. Knigge did that by
creating a Klangfarbenmelodie,
a melody thats divided over
different instruments. These
instruments have to fit well
together, otherwise they
sound too dissected. I had
to make all the notes a little
longer, create space in them for
extra reverb, to make them fit.
He used lines of melody that
run over and through each
other, creating new tones.
This works well in a church
because the tones sound
elongated anyway, he says.
The new additional sound
colours that appear during the
live performance are like small
musical presents to me.
103
At first Knigge wanted to
fill all eight corners of the
Noorderkerk with oboes. But
soon he found a more practical
approach. Oboes sound best
when played side by side, he
says. So they can help each
other. This achieves the best
musical result. He agrees
with Grahl: Often an unusual
spatial arrangement is more
appealing to the eye than to the
ear. For me the ear is definitely
more important. Having one
oboe in every corner would in
my piece at least degenerate
into loose shreds of music.
So he chose to let the sound
come from one place. In the
Noorderkerk the audience is
seated around the stage in the
middle, so the centre has the
most concentrated projection
of sound. If you want to blend
the instruments well you
should just keep them together
in the same place, so it creates
a warm glow that flows over
the audience. And with that,
the audience is still aware
of the space, Knigge says.
The sound reflection of the
churchs acoustics makes sure
the music still surrounds you.
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

104
Music,
Space and
Architecture
exhibition at
arcam
Lieselore Maes

105
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m
Music exists thanks to audible noise,
constructed from sounds; architecture exists
thanks to tangible matter. Architectural space
is physical and therefore quantifiable, while
musical space is immeasurable, since it is
largely the product of the personal associations
of the individual listening to it. The relationship
that music and architecture experience in
space is based to a considerable extent on the
power of suggestion. That suggestion of space
was the main focus in the Music, Space and
Architecture exhibition from 24 September to
13 November 2010 in the gallery at arcam, the
Amsterdam Centre for Architecture.
106
The acoustic objects on display shared a
common bond in that they all were related in
some way to noise and sound. In a few cases,
the sound clearly concerned music; in other
cases, opinions might differ. The space around
the objects or rather: caused by the objects
could not be seen anywhere and was perceived
differently by each visitor to the exhibition.
That perception existed solely in the minds of
visitors, depending on their individual capacity
for thought association and willingness to think
along the lines of the object. The perceptive
viewer and listener will have noticed that
the various objects suggested levels of scale
arranged in a series, from the sweeping space
of the city to the pure intimacy of Bach and the
silence in which everything comes together.
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Side Scan Sonar, Dirk van

Lieshout
Houthaven Project Office
(Co Stor)
The Side Scan Sonar, a floating
pavilion by Dirk van Lieshout,
was docked in the water beside
the arcam building for the
duration of the exhibition. The
pavilion picked up sounds from
its immediate surroundings
with microphones placed in
and around the pavilion (and
underwater). These sounds
could then either be broadcast
directly (in their raw form)
or distributed after special
equipment had been used
tosamplethe recordings with
other sounds, such as archival
recordings or sounds produced
especially for the occasion.
Visitors heard sounds from
the surrounding environment,
some of which were actual
recordings of the noise in that
area, and some which were in
part manipulations that were
exaggerated or caricatured.

107
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Acoustic Mirror
Museum Wings of Liberation,
Best
Acoustic mirrors were
used in the Second World
War to detect enemy planes
across great distances. The
enormous dishes picked up the
sounds of the aeroplanes and
conducted them directly to the
operators ear. The listener
could manually aim the dish
when he heard something,
calling out the angle at which
he had received the plane
noises to a second person, who
could radio the report in to
headquarters. The device can
be considered a primitive and
far from reliable precursor to
the radar we use today.

108
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Helicopter String Quartet,

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen dreamed of
musicians who could fly.
This dream became reality
with the Helicopter String
Quartet. The four members
of a string quartet fly up into
the air in an equal number
of helicopters, playing
their own part individually
but simultaneously. The
helicopters can play a
theatrical role in that they
can be seen and heard by the
audience gathered around.
Alternatively, they could
be theatrically absent if the
audience is kept in a closed and
acoustically insulated room.
The score clearly gives each
instrument its own colour line.
The four lines jump from one
staff to the other, resembling
birds flying around the
helicopters. The notes played
by the four string musicians
are conveyed to the audience
via a mixing board operated
by a sound director. When he
was still alive, Stockhausen
handled the sound himself.
The film screened in the
exhibition follows the four
musicians and the composer
before and during its premire
at Westergasfabriek in
Amsterdam (Holland
Festival, 1995).

109
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Super Sonic Sound Scape

Shoes, Ricardo Huisman
The Super Sonic Sound Scape
Shoes installation by acoustic
artist Ricardo Huisman,
consisting of two huge wool
shoes, is an example of a
project aimed at experiencing
what are known as touch
soundscape compositions.
In these compositions,
architectural objects can be
touched and imagined. They
are not only heard, but also
felt with the entire body,
creating the experience of an
architectural walking tour
while standing still. The
space created by the physical
experiences is referred to by
the artist as sound space.

110
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Philips Pavilion, Le
Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis,
Edgard Varse
Atomium, Brussels
At the 1958 World Fair in
Brussels, Philips displayed
a construction of its own.
The aim was to give a
demonstration of the advanced
technology achieved by
Philips, using the most
state-of-the-art resources
of that time to build it. Le
Corbusier was asked to
design the building, but the
collective artwork that the
project ultimately became is
attributed in part to architect/
composer Iannis Xenakis (who
developed the architectural
concept) and composer Edgard
Varse. The show of sounds
and images displayed there,
the Pome lectronique,
seems to have been the first
of its kind. Varse composed
music for the show set to film
footage by Le Corbusier. The
three models of the Philips
Pavilion in the arcam
exhibition offer an impression
of the process it took to
find the right shape for the
pavilion. At the exhibition, the
original Pome lectronique
projected in the structure was
projected from the base, using
the original sounds.

111
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Spatial Sound, Erik Blits,

assisted by Taco Keers
(realization)
Vedute Foundation/nai,
Rotterdam (manuscript 0126)
Spatial Sound, a spatial
manuscript from the
partial collection Acoustic
Architecture Architectural
Acoustics curated by the
Vedute Foundation, is the
result of a study on acoustic
perception. How do you
listen to a space? What do you
perceive? The conclusions
of this study included the
observations that spatial
transitions can be perceived
easily, but that walls and
objects can be perceived after
training solely by listening;
even empty space can be
heard. The sound of space
seldom needs to be literally
amplified, since it is already
perceived subconsciously. It
is sufficient to be motivated to
hear, to surrender completely
to the subtle interplay of
acoustic spatial perception and
the complex totality of sensory
stimuli. The deliberate
acoustic perception of a space
intensifies the experience of
space. Movement and self-
produced sound are important
in this context, since an active
attitude can intensify the
experience.

112
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Wall/Sound Separator,
Cilia Erens
Vedute Foundation/nai,
Rotterdam (manuscript 0127)
In this spatial manuscript from
the partial collection Acoustic
Architecture Architectural
Acoustics curated by the
Vedute Foundation, space
is seen as an intrinsic part
of the built environment.
Distinctions are made
between indoor and outdoor
noises, and the latter seem to
contain the former. Where
something is demolished,
the object that was created
by construction and took on
its own world of sounds will
vanish. Indoor sounds mix
with sounds from outdoors
until the moment when the
walls have been taken down
completely; those sounds
have died down and outdoor
sound supplants indoor
sound. The spatial document
in the exhibition represents
the demolition site at that
moment when the final walls
of a building are torn down
and what was inside, and the
sounds it made, now come to
an end. Ribbons, fences and
gauze separate the listener
from the demolition process
and act as protection for the
sound separator: the static of
roofs and walls. The listener
becomes part of the walls final
minute as a sound barrier, is
still standing inside but hears
how the wall is torn down from
outside. The materials used
in the piece come from actual
demolition; the sound is played
in real time and is not mixed.

113
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

J.S. Bachs Invention No. One

in C Major, Jan Hoogstad
Vedute Foundation/nai,
Rotterdam (manuscript 0120)
Hoogstads spatial manuscript
from the partial collection
Acoustic Architecture
Architectural Acoustics
curated by the Vedute
Foundation is based on the
concept that sound by its very
nature offers the opportunity
to determine distances
in space. One important
reference is that blind people
appear to be able to recognize
shapes based on hearing. The
manuscript in the exhibition
can be seen as a follow-up
to previous experiments
in musical architecture,
an architectural theory
formulated by Hoogstad and
informed by his conviction
that spatial definition is the
essence of architecture and
is based on spatial systems
according to the model of
music theory. The piece shows
how the Bach composition fits
together like a puzzle. The
distances between the notes
are displayed graphically,
while the frequencies (which
indicate the height of the
notes) are converted into
surfaces. All the tones thus
receive their own position in
space and in relation to each
other.

114
experimental space /Music, Space and Architecture exhibition at a rca m

Silence Dome, Jord den

Hollander
The silence dome is a scale
model of the Silence Centre
at the 2002 Floriade (the
world fair for horticulture)
in Haarlemmermeer. The
atmosphere in this dome,
which was torn down after
the Floriade, was determined
by the transformation of light
and sound, and the movement
of water. All around the
structure, transparent
plastic tubes were wrapped
in spirals around a steel
frame, with water pumped
through the tubes at different
speeds. The resulting mass
of flowing water formed an
effective layer of acoustic
insulation from the outside
world, making the pavilion
the perfect place for a moment
of contemplation. At that
time, the scale model was
checked to verify whether the
construction would have the
desired effect on the visitors.

115
experimental space /Space to listen

116
Space
to listen
Sebastian Janusz
Machiel Spaan

117
experimental space /Space to listen

The Academy of Architecture organized a series of lectures as part of the Music, Space and
Architecture event. This Capita Selecta series featured an additional programme of performances
by Justin Bennett, Raviv Ganchrow, Sebastian Janusz, Jacob Kirkegaard and others. Each
performance transformed the academy building into a space of sound in its own way. These sound
spaces rendered parts of the building audible and allowed listeners to experience them. On each
occasion the academy became an instrument that invited the audience to wander around and
discover the space by ear.

Urban sounds and the silence of a church Justin Bennett performed his piece Sundial
Artist and sonologist Justin Bennett collects in the Great Hall of the academy. Sundial is a
the sounds of cities. His work expressly series of compositions in which he analyzed
connects to the city, the architecture and the daily rhythm of a number of cities. Bennett
the urban surroundings. He is interested in edited sound recordings that he made over the
the creative potential of noise the form of course of a full day in a city (from midnight
undifferentiated sound that we usually refer to to midnight) into a 12-minute compilation: a
as disquiet and din. Noise represents the basic spatial scenography in which the city wakes up,
energy of the city, but it is scarcely accessible to breathes, lives and sleeps. Various cities were
the unpractised ear in its stacked, opaque form. performed in the Great Hall, each with its
own sound and rhythm. A remarkable aspect
In The Shotgun Architecture project, Bennett was the mingling of the presented sounds with
collected the sounds he heard after he fired a the real-time sounds of Amsterdam. You can
pistol in an urban space along the Zuid-As in always hear the city in the academy building.
Amsterdam. By listening to the recordings of The sound of the city seeps in through the
the echoes of the pistol shot, listeners could find slits in window frames and door openings and
out information about the format, the form and becomes part of the total sound space, and the
the material of the buildings around the site. performance by Bennett seemed to enhance
Each surface and each material reflects sound this experience. The sounds of Rome, Berlin
in a different way and the sound signature and Istanbul intermingled with the noise of
of each place is unique. 1 The relation between Amsterdam.
sound and architecture in Bennetts oeuvre lies
in the abstract space between the time-based Sound artist Justin Bennett calls himself a
nature of sound and the physical nature of listener above all else. Listening carefully
space. It is in this interim space that he succeeds reveals a wealth of information about the
in distilling the essence of our daily experience city, the street, the buildings and the space.
of the built environment. 2 By contrast, artist Jacob Kirkegaard takes
a particular space, and not the entire city, as
the starting point for his voyage of discovery:
an intuitive search for a new artwork. He
transformed recorded silences from spaces in
the Chernobyl nuclear power plant into a sound
installation in this way, and sound created
by the space in his own ear became a sound
sculpture.

1 Justin Bennett (2010) The acoustic

reality of urban space, Capita 2 Rahma Khazam (2009) Cities of
Selecta lecture, Amsterdam, 22 sound, Stroom gallery, The Hague,
April. 2009

118
experimental space /Space to listen

Jacob Kirkegaard displayed his aion in the
hall of the Theaterschool.3 Sound and image
transported the imagination to the bleak yet
poetic atmosphere of four spaces inside the
Chernobyl nuclear power plant: a church, an
auditorium, a swimming pool and a sports
hall. Kirkegaard recorded the silence inside
these spaces. The sound recordings were then
played a number of times in the same spaces
and recorded again. Repeating this procedure
ten times, one after another, meant increasing
the density of the layers of sound, as a result
of which a unique sound full of overtones
emerged in each space. Accordingly, each
space brought forth its own primeval sound.
Kirkegaard drew inspiration for this project
from Alvin Luciers I am sitting in a room. In this
performance, Lucier searched for the unique
sound of the space. By recording his own voice
in a room, then playing it and repeating this
procedure a number of times, he was left with
just the resonation of the space. The repeated
reflections of sound waves completely absorbed
the voice. The result was unique to the space in
which the performance took place. Each room
has its own melody, concluded Lucier.
Justin Bennett brings the sounds of cities into
the building, thereby allowing us to share in
his own soundscape. The sounds around the
academy building seeped deep inside at various
points. The performance by Bennett enabled
us to experience these sounds better and opened
up the night and day rhythm of the building
to us.
Kirkegaards aion does the very opposite. It
sucks the listener deep into the atmosphere of
his spaces. The audience is totally swept along
by the silence discovered, a silence that makes
more and more sound as you venture deeper into
the space. You become one with the space.
The building as instrument and soundscape
Raviv Ganchrow emphasizes that sound
establishes a connection between the body and
space. There is a sensory interaction between
sound and the body. We listen with more than
our ears. If we learn to listen to the space in
a different way we can experience the space
differently through sound, just like tuning an
instrument. What Ganchrow attempts to do
with his installations is to render audible the
sound of a building that we no longer hear. With
his installations he transforms buildings into
(sound) instruments. 4
In his Double Sway installation, Ganchrow
let sound walk through the gallery of the
academy building by recording sound, playing
it, and then continually recording and playing it
again at another strategic spot in the building.5
Repeating this exercise right around the gallery
resulted in a spatial sound loop. The sound
walked through the gallery from one side to
the other. And the listener influenced the loop,
since his sounds were also recorded and played.
Additionally, the sounds of the city became part
of the sound sculpture. Because of the position
of loudspeakers and recording points, the space
of the gallery became part of the instrument.
The materials of the floor, ceiling and corners
influenced the sound reflections. The form
of the gallery, the corners of which are not
perpendicular but angled, became audible in the
composition.

5 Raviv Ganchrow (2010) Spatial where on the intimate surface of the

3 Jacob Kirkegaard (2010) Sound
artist and composer, Capita Selecta
lecture, Amsterdam, 6 March.
4 Raviv Ganchrow. Here and there.
Notes on the Materiality of Sound. in
oase 2009, no. 78, pp. 70-81.
experience of sonic domains, Capita
Selecta lecture, Amsterdam, 6 May.
(In the essay Hear and there. Notes
on the Materiality of Sound, Raviv
Ganchrow writes the following: To
hear space is to derive a spatiality
from a temporal event. To see sound
is to wrap that same temporality in
a tangible cloak. For the listener,
the distant unfolds from within the
near by way of tactile interactions,
ear, a sonic fragment effortlessly
sets forward an impression of the
whole. Though once the image of
an acoustic space of interactions
begins to exert its presence back into
the chambers of hearing, it would
seem that even the most attentive
listening plumbs only one facet at a
time from myriads of interlocking
event-structures comprising the
entire field of sounds.

119
experimental space /Space to listen

Sebastian Janusz. Deconstruction of an Ensemble

120
experimental space /Space to listen

Justin Bennett. Sundial

Jacob Kirkegaard. Aion Raviv Ganchrow, Double Sway

121
experimental space /Space to listen
Ganchrows work alludes to that of the
Austrian sound artist Bernhard Leitner. His
works, among them Space-Swing (Raum-
Wiege) and Sound-Space (Ton-Raum), deal with
the audio-physical experience of spaces and
objects whose form and content is determined
by the movement of sound. The sounds and
sound sequences move through space and
create a new architectural environment. This
composition of sound material and also of
movement adds new qualities to the space and
adds an extra layer to the architecture. Leitner
builds architectural sculptures in an invisible
(and new) system of sound patterns and pitch,
articulation and dynamism, harmony and
contrast.
Sebastian Janusz, architect and musician,
analyzes the conventional musical ensemble in
his Deconstruction of an Ensemble performance.
Each of the musicians of the band called
NO|me performed a composition at the same
time, each in a different space of the academy
building.6 The performances were recorded
and played simultaneously in the Great Hall.
Except that here the audience could hear
the composite sound produced by the three
instruments together. Each of the three spaces
is acoustically different in character: piano
in the low and long gallery; double bass in the
tall timber stairwell; and percussion in the
closed and isolated model workshop. During
the performance, the three different spaces
and their acoustic properties were explored
simultaneously through music. The acoustic
dimensions of the academy building just like
the instruments formed an essential part of
the concert. The academy building thus became
a complex acoustic instrument.
6 Jan Lemmens (timpani, percussion),
Yrjn Rankka (double bass) and
Sebastian Janusz (piano).
122
Moving through the building, the audience
heard fragments played by the individual
musicians. Sound passed through the corridors,
door openings and stairwells of the building.
The performance transformed through the
movement of listener, who could thus create
their own compositions. Place and time became
unique to each listener. The building assisted in
this process by serving as a sound box, a sound
medium and a dcor.
You could compare this approach with the
Helikopter-Streichquartett that Karlheinz
Stockhausen performed during the Holland
Festival in 1995. Four string players performed
in four helicopters that circled overhead in the
air above Amsterdam. The sound was recorded
and played at a central location. That resulted
in two simultaneous performances: one in
the outdoor space of the city with the four
circulating helicopters; and one in the interior
space (music hall) where the sound produced
by the four string players was brought together
to form a single musical execution. Sebastian
Janusz added another layer to this in his
performance at the Academy of Architecture.
The spaces of the different musicians were
carefully selected to determine the tone and
colour of the sound. The different spaces for
percussion, bass and piano became part of the
instruments and the sound that they produced.
Both Ganchrow and Janusz interpreted the
academy building as a music instrument.
Whereas Janusz actively made music at
different places, thereby turning the building
into an important extra instrument that
made the composition merge with the venue,
Ganchrow allowed the space of the gallery
to determine the sound by allowing it to
constantly reflect through part of the space.
The sounds in and around the space were
boosted, distorted and carried by the space
itself. Janusz used various acoustically specific
spaces in the building as extensions of the music
instruments. The spaces became sound boxes.
Ganchrow made a specific acoustic space of the
building audible, not by adding sound to it but
by transporting the sound already present in
the space.
Architecture is not a
experimental space /Space to listen

synchronizing phenomenon,
but a gradual unfolding. It
consists of a sequence of
tableaux, associated in time
and space. Like music it is a
means of conceiving in time.
Le Corbusier. Die Reihe: a periodical devoted to developments in contemporary music. Cited by T.Pressor, 1958, p 44.

123
The greater the space of
experimental space /Space to listen

time (or space of pitch, or

space of intensity, or space of
timbre) made available by the
composer for variability the
less determinate will be the
musical text.

Karl H. Worne. Karlheinz Stockhausen : Werk und Wollen, 1950-1962. Rodenkirchen/Rhein 1963, p.102.

124
experimental space /Space to listen

Raviv Ganchrow, Double Sway

125
experimental space /Space to listen

NO|me. Deconstruction of an Ensemble

126
experimental space /Space to listen

127
experimental space /Space to listen

Raviv Ganchrow

Jacob Kirkegaard. Aion Sebastian Janusz

128
experimental space /Space to listen

In an interview in The Poetics of Space, Raviv

Ganchrow states that In sound, the space you
experience is in flux. Its exactly what you make
of it. It is a quintessential perceiver of centric
space. In that sense, addressing the sonic aspect
of architecture is not so much about adding
sound into the built environment, its really
about rethinking listening.7

What architects can learn from Ganchrow,

Bennett, Janusz and Kirkegaard is that
designers can learn to listen better. Listening in
a new way can be applied not only to the spaces
they enjoy or to the location of a new design, but
also to the structures and materials they want
to deploy. This listening demands devotion and
calls for patience and precision, time and time
again.

7 Arie Altena . Approaches to Space

& Sound: Interview with Raviv
Ganchrow, in: Arie Altena (red.). The
Poetics of Space: Sonic Acts xiii, Spatial
Explorations in Art, Science, Music &
Technology, Amsterdam 2010, p. 33.

129
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

130
Eventscapes:
the aural
experience
of space
Barry Blesser and
Linda-Ruth Salter

131
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

The functional role of hearing A useful way to understand hearing and

Evolution allocated scarce and expensive
neural resources in the brain for a sophisticated
auditory system because hearing had survival
advantage. While Homo sapiens eventually
expanded the mammalian auditory system to
allow for understanding speech and enjoying
music, the auditory system originally arose
as a reliable way for sensing dynamic events.
A sonic event is some (man-made or natural)
activity that produces a sudden impact or
periodic vibrations, which then produce
sound waves that propagate through the
environment. Sound waves are the transport
mechanism that brings those external events
into consciousness. Because we perceive
dynamic events aurally, Schafers soundscape
consisting of keynote sounds, sound signals
and soundmarks is actually an eventscape. 1
The focus of hearing is on dynamic events. In
contrast, the focus of vision is on static objects.
We are aware of the relatively static world of
objects and geometries, which reflect ambient
light, through vision. Thus a landscape is
actually an objectscape.
Among the senses, hearing is unique because
of the properties of sound waves. The sonic
broadcast of a dynamic event flows around
obstacles and through crevices, entering a space
without permission. Because hearing is always
active, without earlids or a voluntary point
of spatial focus, listeners are involuntarily
connected to those events that are audible,
regardless of their location. For example, an
unexpected thump from the roof immediately
catches our attention because sound is an early
warning system. Auditory events then tell the
visual system where to look.
vision is to realize that they are both part
of an integrated system with overlapping
and complementary qualities. The system
creates an internal holistic model of an
external world composed of eventscapes and
objectscapes. The importance of this sensory
connection is illustrated by deprivation
experiments conducted in the 1950s. Subjects
rapidly experienced hallucinations and
mental instability when deprived of all
sensory connections. 2 Hearing appears to
be particularly important in maintaining a
functional connection to the external world.
The inability to hear events proves to be a larger
burden on mental health than the inability
to see objects. Martin Roth reported that
undiagnosed hearing loss was the primary
cause of mental illness in the elderly, and more
recently, Philip Zimbardo demonstrated that
simulated deafness in normal individuals
produced symptoms of paranoia. 3, 4
Aural boundaries are experiential
We need a framework and vocabulary in order
to explore the properties of eventscapes.5 From
the perspective of listeners, a sonic event that
can be heard or recognized is located within
their acoustic horizon. Beyond this acoustic
horizon, sound sources are inaudible, as if
they did not exist. In the complementary view
centred at the sound source, an acoustic arena is
that area within which a particular sonic event
can be heard by the inhabitants of the arena.
Acoustic horizons and acoustic arenas define
invisible boundaries based on aural experience
rather than on tangible physical surfaces; they
are functional partitions of a space.

1. Schafer, R. The Soundscape. Our

Sonic Environment and The Tuning of
the World. New York 1977.
2. Cohen, S., Silverman, A., Bressler,
B., and Shmavonian, B. Problems
in isolation studies. In: P. Solomon,
P. E. Kubzanski, P. H Leiderman, J.
H. Mendelson, R. Trumbull and D.
Wexler (eds). Sensory Deprivation: A
Symposium Held at Harvard Medical
School. Cambridge, MA. 1965.
3. Roth, M. The natural history of
mental disorder in old age. Journal of
Mental Science 101, 1955, pp. 281-301.
4. Zimbardo, P., Anderson, S. and
Kabat, L. Induced hearing deficit 5. Blesser, B. and Salter, L.
generates experimental paranoia. Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?
Science 212 (4502), 1981, pp. 1529- Experiencing Aural Architecture.
1531. Cambridge, MA 2007.

132
Hearing shouldnt be equated
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

with the sense organ ear,

since our entire body is
exposed to sound waves
I sense with my entire body,
with my skin, whether or
not I can easily speak in a
room. Thats an acoustic
subconscious that everyone
has.
Bernhard Leitner: English translation taken from Klang als Bau-material, Eugen Blume in conversation with Bernhard Leitner, Berlin
2008.

133
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

Fig. 1. William Hogarth. The Enraged Musician, 1741.

134
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space
How we experience the eventscape strongly
influences our behaviour. Consider two
professional colleagues at a busy restaurant who
are discussing a business project. Given their
relationship, they have a preferred personal
distance, which might be one metre.6 If a high
level of background noise produces a small
acoustic horizon, conversation is not possible at
this distance. These colleagues have awkward
choices: move closer to create an inappropriate
intimate social distance, thus including each
other in the acoustic arena of their normal
voices; shout to expand their acoustic arena; or
remain silent without conversing. Emotional
stress results when the acoustic horizon or arena
does not match the appropriate social distance.
There have always been conflicts about who
owns the eventscape in urban environments,
and these conflicts were seldom resolved by
legal regulations.7 In the picture below, William
Hogarth depicts a conflict between a musician
in the parlour of his private home and urbanites
whose home is the street. (see Fig. 1) From
a visual perspective, there are two distinct
spaces street and parlour; but from an aural
perspective, the open window creates a single
acoustic arena as a shared resource. The creator
of the loudest sounds becomes the owner of the
arena.
In the 21st century, combat over ownership of
the acoustic arena has become more ubiquitous.
Advertisers use televisions in the public areas
of airports to insert monetized messages into
the heads of those waiting for their flights.
Similarly, cinema theatres are paid to deliver
excessively loud commercial messages to
captive audiences waiting for the main feature
to begin. As a reaction, individuals often adopt
a defensive strategy, using headphones linked
to portable sound devices in order to suppress
the external eventscape and substitute their own.
Everyone wants to control the eventscape, either
for their own private use or for capturing the
consciousness of others.
6. Hall, E. The Hidden Dimension. New
York 1966.
7. Thompson, E. The Soundscape of
Modernity. Cambridge, MA 2002, p.
115. Countryside. Trans. by M. Thom
8. Corbin, A. Village Bells: Sound and from the original French, Les Cloches
Meaning in the 19th Century French de la Terre. New York 1998.
135
The quality and comfort of an eventscape is
based on the relationship of the inhabitants
to the events within their acoustic horizon.
Noise can therefore be considered as
unwanted sonic events that intrude; and
conversely, if events are wanted, they are
not noise. Based on personal preferences and
cultural biases, a given event may or may
not be considered to be noise. For example,
the eventscape of a natural forest is not
intrinsically better or worse than that of a dense
urban environment. Aural combat arises from
conflicting attitudes towards sonic events. The
quality of an eventscape therefore involves
not only the sonic content, but also the size,
shape and location of the acoustic horizon.
Successful strategies for managing combat
involve manipulating these aspects of the
eventscape.
The contours of an acoustic arena are
determined by the interaction between the
intensity of sonic events, which depends on
the dynamic behaviour of the inhabitants, and
the physical properties of the environment,
which are relatively static. Physical geography,
whether natural mountains and valleys, or
man-made halls and walls, modifies the acoustic
arenas. Together they determine a region of
social cohesion. For example, in 19th-century
French villages, citizenship was based on the
ability of individuals to hear the bells of the
town.8 The bells broadcast information about
events such as time of day, call to church and
call to arms. Hearing them contributed to self-
esteem, emotional well-being, civic pride and
territorial identity. Schafer quotes the resident
of a small town who remembers daily sonic
events entering her acoustically porous living
space.9 Her acoustic horizon was extended to
encompass the larger social sphere. She could
identify trades people by the sound of their
horses. The iceman had a couple of very heavy
cobs the coalman had a pair of substantial
Percherons that always walked the dry-
goods store had lightweight horses and the
Chinese vegetable men had very lazy horses.
Inhabitants could hear fishing boats returning
to harbour, children walking home from
9. Schafer, R. The Vancouver
Soundscape. Vancouver 1978.
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

Fig. 2. Whispering gallery in a corridor at Grand Central Terminal.

136
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space
school, the rattling of leaves in the wind and the
neighbourhood dog fighting with the cat.
Physical spaces can have unexpected shapes
and sizes, such that the experience of visual
and aural spaces diverges. For example, large
spaces with domed ceilings and circular walls
can produce acoustic arenas called whispering
galleries (see Fig. 2). Sound from one location
is focused at a physically distant location,
combining two widely separated visual regions
into a single acoustic arena. Thus, two people
standing at opposite corners in the dining
concourse of the Grand Central Station in
New York can hear each other as if they were
standing in close proximity. Similarly, a pair of
widely spaced parabolic reflectors at a science
museum dramatically demonstrates how a
physical distance of 50 metres can be made to
have an aural distance of a few centimetres.
In these cases, the two senses vision and
hearing rather than reinforcing a consistent
spatial experience, produce quite different
spaces. Eventscapes and objectscapes can be
experienced in contradictory ways.
Modern technology provides us with the
means for creating inconsistent eventscapes
and objectscapes. Electronically amplified
excessively loud music at a rock concert
allows the hearer to be transported to a
musical eventscape while remaining in
the physical objectscape of the seating
area. Teleconferencing allows physically
distant objectscapes to be fused into a single
eventscape. Individuals separated by large
distances can aurally co-exist within the
same acoustic arena. Cell phones allow
unrelated eventscapes to be superimposed
onto each other. Consider an individual
talking on a cell phone while driving a car.
He is in the eventscape of traffic on a busy
road and simultaneously in the eventscape of
his conversation partner who is in a business
meeting. The talker can perceptually switch
between eventscapes without physically
moving. What you see is not necessarily where
you are.
11 Charles, R. and Ritz, D. Brother Ray.
New York 1978. Chion, M. Audio-
10 Mehta, V. A donkey in a world of Vision. Trans. by C. Gorbman from
horses. The Atlantic Monthly 200(1), the original French, LAudio-Visual.
1957, pp. 24-30. New York 1994.
137
Sonic events and acoustic space
While the objectscape is usually perceived by
the way in wich the visual system interprets
ambient reflected light, the auditory system
can also perceive objects and geometries by the
way that it interprets ambient reflected sound.
A listener can hear the way in which physical
attributes of the environment change sound.
We can hear a low hanging ceiling or nearby
wall because the low frequencies are boosted
near those surfaces. We can hear an open door,
the vast volume of a cavern or cathedral, wood
surfaces, the depth of a well and the openness
of a beach. In such cases, we hear properties of
the objectscape because sonic events illuminate
objects and geometries.
Everyone can learn to hear objects and
geometries of the environment, but most people
never attend to this aspect of hearing. Some
blind individuals choose to invest in this skill.
Ved Mehta, blind from childhood, described
how he rode his bicycle through the streets of
Calcutta using an elevated sense of auditory
spatial awareness. 10 Ray Charles, the world
famous jazz musician, describes how he learned
to navigate entirely with his hearing, never
using a cane or seeing-eye dog. 11 One individual
could identify the shape of a traffic sign by
listening. 12 In these cases, the way in which
objects and geometries modify sonic events
allows listeners to visualize the environment
which produced the change in the sonic event.
Our auditory awareness of objectscapes
augments our aural experience of eventscapes.
12 Rice, C. Human echo perception.
Science 155, 1967, pp. 656-664.
intrinsic space / Eventscapes: The Aural Experience of Space

Fig. 3. Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

138
Listeners never hear the original sonic event
as it was created at the source. As sound waves
propagate from the source to the listener,
they are always changed during the transport
process by the physical acoustics of the
environment. The reflections from side walls in
a concert hall add aural mass to musical events.
A room with plush carpets and upholstered
chairs transforms a harsh sonic event, such as
breaking glass, into a mellow event. The notes
of a musical instrument are elongated by the
reverberation of a concert hall. The audience
never hears a pure musical instrument. The
physical properties of the environment always
modify sonic events in an eventscape; each
space creates a unique modification of these
events.
There is a dual relationship between sonic
events and spatial acoustics. On the one hand, a
sonic event illuminates objects in a space, such
as sensing a wall by the echo that it produces.
On the other hand, spatial acoustics changes
the perception of sonic events, such as music
performed in a concert hall. We hear objects
and geometries illuminated by sonic events, and
we hear sonic events that have been changed by
objects and geometries.
A high-quality concert hall exemplifies the
complex relationship between sonic events and
the physical environment (see Fig. 3). Research
into the interdependence of music and spaces
provides an understanding of this duality.
A musical performance in an open meadow is
not experienced in a way that is comparable to
a performance in a concert hall. In an enclosed
space, the early reflections from the side walls
and ceiling change music notes by giving them
more aural mass, larger apparent size and
stronger intimacy. Musical events originating
on the stage are changed by the enclosing
envelope of the concert hall.
13 Chion, ibidem
At the same time, long reverberation envelops
the audience in a sea of sound that is not
perceived as a sonic event originating from the
stage. Cathedrals, with their extremely long
enveloping reverberation, allow inhabitants
to hear the enormous volume of the space and
the hardness of the surfaces regardless of what
sonic events are illuminating that volume. With
reverberation, listeners are located within the
acoustic process itself and they cannot perceive
the reverberation as being a source event
located at a defined location. The space is made
audible by the illuminating sound. Directors
of cinema manipulate each of these four
components to create a compelling illusion. 13
Summary and conclusions
We inhabit eventscapes where dynamic
sonic events, modified by the static acoustics
of the space, are transported to listeners.
Eventscapes are described by the virtual
boundaries of acoustic horizons and acoustic
arenas. Combat over control of the acoustic
arena has occurred throughout the ages.
Individuals have complex cognitive strategies
for determining how eventscapes are controlled
and integrated into their daily lives. These
strategies depend upon individuals unique
personal choices, cultural standards and the
state of technology.
Eventscapes (experienced primarily but not
exclusively by hearing) and objectscapes
(experienced primarily but not exclusively by
vision) have a complex, mutually interactive,
always changing relationship. Because the
brain fuses visual and aural components of
eventscapes and objectscapes into a single
internal representation of the external world,
we seldom recognize these four sensory
mechanisms as being distinctly different.
intrinsic space / Shapes of Time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality

140
Shapes of
time: an
experiential
account
of sonic
spatiality
Raviv Ganchrow

141
intrinsic space / Shapes of Time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality
The following text suggests that the qualities
of experienced space in sound are inherent
to, but not measurably part of, an acoustic
domain. Furthermore, audible spatiality is not
mimetically representative of, or restricted
to, corresponding visual frameworks of space.
This is not to say that audible spatiality has an
independent existence quite the contrary, it
is linked to concrete events. On the other hand,
heard spaces have no other existence than that
to which our experience attests. At the same
time, audible spatiality can not be reduced to a
phantom effect. Audible space is ontologically
real if not merely for the fact that it is tied
to a physical locale (even when that locale is
recorded), then at least in terms of a status it
maintains within intersubjective categories
of experience. Yet the specific characteristics
and qualities of an audibly real spatiality,
I propose, depend on radically subjective-
relational transformations. The suggestion is
that any noticeable space in sound is an emergent
property formed by interactions between
listeners and contexts of sound; and that audible
spatial qualities are indicative of expanded,
resounding, contexts. As a result, the terms
through which sound-space appears are
essentially observer-centric, producing a range
of discernable spatial presences. In addition,
the variety of sonic presence experienced by
a group of listeners at a common location do
not relate back to a presupposed, objective,
acoustic event but rather indicate a form of
aggregate-realism where the collected experiences
themselves form multifaceted yet concrete
appearances, characteristically ambiguous and
at times contradictory in temperament.
My attempt is to broach common-sense
notions of audibility by adopting an operative
mode of hearing that suggests a polyphonic
approach to spatiality. To arrive at an expanded
understanding of sonic spatiality, I will
compare two perceptual categories, namely
hearing reverberation and listening for
pitch. Admittedly these two examples do
not sufficiently conclude, nor amply explain
the broader implications suggested in the
introduction. None the less the choice of
these examples has to do with the seemingly
unproblematic and clearly defined categories
they maintain within common-sense notions
142
of hearing: on the one hand, hearing a space
within which a sound is understood to be
contained (reverberation) and on the other
hand, hearing an inerrant characteristic of
sound (pitch). My hope is that by taking two
disparate positions in auditory sensation,
that these examples may indicate other, less
defined, categories of hearing that in turn can
be considered in a similar vein.
This analysis is indebted to an idea of
immediate experience as the primary
condition from which space (and its
corresponding qualities) are seen to arise
as secondary attributes. In that sense,
heard spaces, necessarily include within
them sensory encounters with lived-time
that suggest embedded attitudes towards
perceptual experience (attitudes that can
be both intentional as well as unconscious
or absent-minded). Hearing space involves
a particular kind of kinesthetic: namely the
specific experiences generated from the friction
between listeners and a locale. The degree
to which spatial attributes in sound are an
outcome of situated perceptual interactions
becomes apparent when examining our
capacity to localize sound. From the physical
(as well as the physiological) standpoint,
sound is a tactile event, entering the body
from the surface of the eardrum. Nonetheless,
sound is rarely perceived to be occurring at
that position on the body. Instead, sounds
are projected unconsciously into external
locations from where they seem to be emanating.
The process of perceptual localization is a
complex matter, but suffice to say that when
hearing is considered from the position of
physical acoustics certain asymmetries arise
between the position of stimulus waves and the
perceived location of sound sources.
The domain of acoustic propagations itself
could be considered the primary space of
sound. Acoustic space, or what could be called
phased space, is that territory where tangled
vibrations travel every which way, oblivious
to any intentions of a listener. This is also
arguably the most measurable space of sound.
After all, the accuracy of wave equations are
indebted to this particular category of space.
On the other hand, acoustic space, with its
intrinsic space / Shapes of Time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality
pronounced empirical access, is also the one
space that cannot be entered by way of the
unmediated senses. In fact, we can never
physiologically hear such a space. It is only by
way of instruments and calculations (after
sound has been geometricized and frequency
has been spatialized) that the pronounced
dimensional-voluminous character of acoustics
becomes tangible.
Our ears communicate quite a different
spatiality in sound, materialized from within
continually unfolding modulations. These
emergent spaces are sustained upon fluctuant
interrelations within events. In the absence
of listeners these spaces remain concealed
potentialities, diffuse and embedded within
innumerable vibrational interactions. That is
not to say that the phased space, mentioned
in the previous paragraph, is any more or
less of a space than those perceived through
listening, but simply that the qualitative aspects
of a sonic space are dependent on the particular
mode of listening that is applied (and this
includes technical modes of listening such as
microphone recordings and acoustic cameras).
In other words, Im suggesting that no audible
space is more primary than any other and that
within a given auditory context. In fact, several
such spaces may seem to overlap, coincide or
even coexist at the same locale. Furthermore,
the biological capacity to hear space (in terms
of an ability to discern particular qualities
within an audible context) is considered here
in terms of a practice rather than a biological
constant. The more one trains certain modes
of listening, the more a specific set of emergent
sonic qualities become noticeably present.
Likewise, the more one expects to find space
within sound, the more those spaces tend to
appear.
When listening through the unmediated ear,
the dimensionality of sound becomes a an audible
spatiality when it is folded back into experience.
Sound must pass through a perceptual process
of sustain and prolongation before space
becomes audible. Reverberation reveals a
resounding presence in architecture inverse
to its degree of vacancy. But what exactly is
heard in architectures confined emptiness?
In the example of perceived reverberation,
143
the impression of expansiveness depends,
quite literally, on durational compounding
of successive intervals. It is not the sounding
of mute walls that is heard but rather an
activation of intervalic-timbral relationships.
Only a portion of sound emitted within a room
arrives directly to the location of a listener.
Most of what is heard has already rebounded
off the various walls and surfaces before
arriving at the ears. These movements unravel
the time of the sound source, imprinting
and extending vibrations into the cavity of
the room. Sound propagation travels in all
directions simultaneously, such that the
reflections have a mirroring effect, resulting
in a rapid onset of crisscrossing sound paths,
themselves recursively altered by the acoustic
characteristics of the hall. A simple impulse
emission, such as a hand clap in a room, very
quickly becomes an immensely complex
acoustic situation. It takes the attendance of
an active ear to take hold of the multitude of
interactions, prolong their perceived presence,
and provide an immediate sense of the
progressive interrelations as a whole.
The space in sound manifests only when sounds
are permitted to linger in the ear. It is important
to stress that the perception of reverberation,
itself a fundamental category of sonic spatiality,
emerges from compounded continuities. The
particular lingering that results in perceived
reverberation is achieved by collapsing rapid,
successive, wave reflections into one another so
that every instance of now contains shadows
of that which has just past from existence. In
reverberation, one cannot distinguish solitary
sound reflections as they are delivered to
the listener at too fast a rate to contemplate
individually. Instead they are comprehended
all at once. This process involves taking hold
of the unwinding time of the sound source
(located in the patterning of propagating
waves) and coiling that expanded time back
around an instance of sensation. In that sense
the perceived spatial quality of reverberation
is not so much an aural impression of the
physical chamber, imparted upon the listener,
as much as it is an encapsulation of all the
incidental relations between body, place and
event constituent of that particular instance
of hearing. In other words, the material
intrinsic space / Shapes of Time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality
and tectonic properties of the chamber only
partially contribute to a much more complex
set of underlying relations conveyed to the
listener as a totality. Practically speaking, the
sensation of an audible now is comprised of
an immediate past. What is heard in a present
moment is a compounding of that which has just
occurred, together with the tendency towards
what is yet to come and made available to
consciousness all-at-once. The audible present
is a thickened condition, where instants of
simultaneity melt into one another, forming
distinct atmospheric spatialeties. These
atmospheres, to a certain extent, condense and
embody the central relations in an unfolding
event.
Another category of aural qualia that seemingly
bypasses the question of space altogether is that
of pitch. In the case of frequency fluctuations,
the perception of discernable pitch arises from
listening into continuous, periodic oscillations.
The perceived tone height of an oscillation is
relative to the specific frequency, or rate of
change, at which the vibration alternates. The
specific architectural conditions in which a
periodic oscillation is heard has very minor, if
any, influence on the perceived pitch. In fact,
if one was to transmit the same periodic signal
directly at the ears aperture as well as from
the far end of a hall, the same pitch would still
be discernable. It would seem then that pitch
constitutes a distinctly separate sonic category
than that of space mentioned in the example
of reverberation. On the other hand, when
examining the process through which qualities
of pitch, timbre and tone arise, some striking
similarities can be discerned. To begin with,
in terms of relationships between stimulus and
perceived outcomes, the qualities of pitch have
no similarity to the intermittent waves seen in
specialized photographs of sound propagation
(the phased space of acoustics). Most notably,
audible pitch is continuous and enveloping
whereas the acoustic waves are intermittent,
spatially elongated and enumerative.
Secondly, the ear does not count the number of
consecutive oscillations when perceiving pitch
but rather compounds motions into discernable
shimmers. Hearing tone height means that the
entire series of consecutive oscillations are
synthesized and conveyed to the listener all at
144
once. Each progressing instant of hearing tone
contains within it a buildup of immediately
preceding moments, thus creating the sensation
of a continuous flow with sustained qualitative
attributes. More importantly, the perceptual
process of compounding seems to be a key
factor in the palpable articulation of qualities
suggesting that there may be more than a casual
relation between what is considered timbral
and what is deemed spatial in sound.
In my opinion, the distinction between
qualities and spatialities in sound is a
superficial one, stemming from social habits
invested in the utility of the respective sonic
definitions, and that the difference between
sound spatiality and sound pitch is one of
degree and not one of kind. On an operative,
perceptual level, one could consider audible
space as a form of qualitative perception
or conversely think of pitch as supporting
an unusual idea of spatiality. The latter
definition, although somewhat counter
intuitive, has in my view more significant
implications. This is not merely a matter of
preference, it has to do with an understanding
that any materialization of sound into palpable
qualities necessarily manifests a corresponding
idea of space within which such materials
are seen to preside. Applying this notion to
the category of audible spatiality, two points
to be stated: Firstly, that degrees of perceived
spatiality are an outcome of interactions
between observer, event and locale. Secondly,
that there is no singular sound-space but rather
an open-ended set of spatial territories, each
containing its own logic and particularity.
Reverberation, pitch and timbre can be
understood as varying interpretations of the
same kind of qualitative experience, namely:
heterogeneous forms of audible spatiality.
From the experiential position (and this
applies to sensations in general), there is no
such thing as a perceived qualities devoid of
spatial attributes. Qualities always occur
in, on, beside, behind or around
something else. Returning to the example
of frequency, if pitch can be contemplated in
isolation, e.g. without an intervening space
of emission, then this suggests the perception
of pitch itself may be a peculiar condition of
intrinsic space / Shapes of Time: an experiential account of sonic spatiality

expansiveness. That is to say that listening to of individual capacities to tune-in to spaces

frequency is an attentiveness to the spacing of as well as within a broader context of listening
micro-intervallic fluctuations and hearing a itself.
discernable spectrum could be considered as
an intuiting of various patterned emanations The potential of an expanded spatial hearing is
of time. Such a broad-based definition of not merely a matter of auditory concentration.
sonic spatiality not only accounts for hybrid Much of what can be heard is not reducible
conditions between the so-called concrete and to a set of listening exercises. The social and
abstract sonic appearances, it can also grant historical context arguably play a crucial role
ontological status to more vague categories to a variety of epistemic meanings ascribed to
such as sonic social space (as a description for instances of hearing. The role of an historical
an evoked audible domain of conversation). In constitution of the senses is not to be under-
that sense, each sound-space is also descriptive estimated, especially in terms of ascribing
of a corresponding framework of action, and spatial-material meanings to sound. Hearing
differences between spatialities are determined relies not only on the space and place within
by variance in degrees of relational complexity which the sounding event occurs, but also on
inherent to corresponding frameworks of the myriad of expectations, prior experiences
action. For instance, a pitch-space includes and listening practices that preceded (and
a reduced framework focused primarily on inevitably oriented) that moment of hearing.
relations between chromatic oscillations and The cultures of listening are shaped by the
postures of observation. Doppler shift indicates accumulated intentional as well as absent-
modifications in the framework of those minded techniques and practices within which
relationships, whereas, reverberation includes common-place hearing is embedded.
a greater number of relational interactions.
The variety of spaces derived from of an
Categories of audible space can be understood expanded sense of listening are never fully
to substantially exist yet at the same time comprehensible as their potentialities reorient
they display an inherent fragility: Once in the double pull between degrees of listening
the listener is withdrawn from a sounding attention, on the one hand, and the context
context , space shrinks back into the expanse that creates such attentiveness, on the other.
of vibrational interactions. The transience, Nonetheless, listening to the site of sound in
malleability and listener-centric nature of any situated context potentially opens into a
audible space calls attention to the importance vast array of spatial murmurings.
of individuating audible spaces. To a certain
degree, acts of naming have a structuring
capacity on the realm of appearances. Names
are form-giving portals through which
the world tends to deliver itself back to us.
Linguistic categories enforce and encapsulate
constellations of perceived qualities deemed
particularly useful and transport them into
a broader social consciousness. Specialized
acoustician nomenclature attests to the utility
in naming experiential categories of sound,
at least in terms of the historic implications
to developments in dedicated listening halls.
At the same time, the futility of a definitive
spatial taxonomy of sound should also be
acknowledged because the conditions through
which something is significantly heard is
perpetually adapting. Transformations in the
backdrop of listening occur both on the level

145
146
Creating
space
Bart Visser

147
intrinsic space / Creating space
Years ago I spent New Years Eve in a small
log cabin, far from the civilized world, in a
mountainous region of Norway. While there, I
had an experience that gave me a flash of insight
into what the essential point of it really is for me
as an artist.
After a long journey, I arrived at the cabin and
was elated by the rugged, snowy landscape.
The first few days flew past, filled with forays
into the surrounding area and explorations
of the mountaintops around me. Such a
magnificent white space! At some point,
however, a blizzard started, accompanied by
howling winds, blowing so fiercely that there
was little else to do than wait inside until the
storm died down. After three days, I was able
to venture outside again; it was still snowing,
but the storm had passed and I was impatient
after the long wait. I followed the contours of
the valley. After striding through the snow
for several hours on my cross-country skis,
something started to nag at me. I was uneasy;
there was something that had caught me off
balance and I was unsure what it was.
I stood still to figure out what had caught my
attention. The falling snow and the horizon
blended together, seamless right up to my feet.
I had no idea how far I was looking was it one
metre or ten, fifty, a hundred? Everything was
white; nothing defined the space in which I
stood. The same sensation applied to my ears.
What space was I hearing? What sound in
that space? Silence? No, there was definitely
a rustling noise. Was it the sound of the falling
snow? Or the rushing of my own blood? Does
snow actually rustle as it falls? I stood still
and my ears and eyes seemed like a camera
that is unable to focus. I became aware of how
strongly I orientate myself with my eyes and
ears, mapping the space in which I stand ... and
how strongly that orientation is imbued with
emotions, memories, sounds, smells. Take
away that orientation and there is confusion,
unease; all sense of proportion vanishes.
Back home, the following question occupied my
thoughts: If space ceases to exist, if it cannot be
perceived, is it possible to create perceptions
that bring about the experience of space?
148
With that in mind, I returned from Norway
and started work on an installation in which the
audience is in a completely shuttered space and
has to come up with their own representation
of that space by experiencing moving light
and sound. Various sounds short taps, heavy
thrumming bass notes and glissandos bounce
off the acoustics of the space. Your ears are
quite capable of forming an impression of the
materiality, size and proportions of the space
through those perceived sounds. Thats how a
bat finds its way too: by sending pulses of sound
out into the space around it and hearing how
they echo back.
Later, more installations and performances
followed in which the experience of space
played a key role. One installation was built
using a microphone and a speaker to hear the
unique sounds native to a space. Each space has
its own echo and its own timbre. By introducing
a sound into that space and recording it, and
then recording that echoed sound again and
playing it back again, over and over, a sound
process emerges in which the acoustics of the
space play an increasingly major role with each
successive recording. In each repetition, the
echo and timbre have more and more impact
on the original sound, until the recorded
timbre has receded into nothingness and only
the sound of the space itself remains. It is like
a very slow feedback process that produces
amazing sounds. At this stage, moving through
the space again with the microphone and the
speaker induces a sound pattern that is entirely
indigenous to the space itself.
In another installation, I took thin sheets of
steel, 1 metre by 2 metres, and used a motor to
induce vibrations in the steel. The resulting
sound is reminiscent of the familiar thunder
sheets. The motors that induce the vibrations
are computer-operated with extreme precision.
The installation is set up in a fort along the
New Dutch Water Defence Line a defence
structure that flooded the land in response to
threats, which was rendered useless by the time
it was completed due to the invention of the
aeroplane.
In Egyptian temples we
intrinsic space / Creating space

encounter the silence that

surrounded the pharaohs...
The silence of architecture
is a responsive, remembering
silence. A powerful
architectural experience
silences all external noise; it
focuses our attention on our
very existence, and as with all
art, it makes us aware of our
fundamental solitude.
Juhani Pallasmaa: The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture of the Senses. London 2005, p.52.

149
After silence, that which
intrinsic space / Creating space

comes nearest to expressing

the inexpressible is music.

Aldous Huxley. Music at Night. London 1931.

150
intrinsic space / Creating space
What is interesting about this installation is
when the motor runs faster or slower, it does not
cause the sound to change; rather, it is the sound
space that undergoes drastic transformation.
When the motor is turning over a minimal
speed, it seems as though the sound comes from
kilometres away, even when youre standing
right beside the installation. Revving the motor
makes it seem as though the sound travels from
outside to inside the space. You could attempt to
achieve the same effect with speakers, but then
it would remain a projection that is not occurring
as such in the space. Because a sheet of steel
has a huge audible body, the ear cannot localize
the source of the sound. The installation also
responds to the movements of the visitors in the
fort. The experience in the fort is intense. The
contrast between the experience of the stuffy,
closed-off inner spaces and the shifting sound
spaces works amazingly well.
I realize that a quest for the space revealed
by the work is a recurring theme running
through all my work. One artist who is a huge
inspiration to me is James Turrell. Where I try
to create and manipulate spaces with sounds, he
works with light. He works with various light
sources, with all sorts of artificial light as well
as daylight. In his works, a space is generally
created that exists solely in the imagination,
even though you are standing in an actual,
physical space with physical light sources. Yet
the space that emerges is in your mind; you
look at it, and you know that what you see is
not there. It is simultaneously confusing and
clarifying. His interventions are so powerful
that nothing after that point resembles what it
was before.
This clarifying confusion, in which you
experience how strongly perception is your
own creation, based on the connections you
make and filled with your own emotions,
memories and thoughts, is what intrigues me so
intensely; it is what I seek.
When I was asked to teach on Music, Space and
Architecture, I immediately said yes. But how
does one teach the profession that I practice?
How can I give a name to what I seek, what I do,
what I would want students to search for?
151
Music, Space and Architecture. In English, the
word Space represents an abstract concept that
has multiple meanings. The simplest definition
is that a space is a functional place inside a
building, like a storage room or reception area.
This definition primarily says something about
how the space might be used, not about what the
space itself is. Another definition of space is the
universe. Not only is it entirely impossible to
truly imagine the proportions of that space, it is
also unclear what space actually is here. Space
can also mean leeway or room to manoeuvre.
An interesting space: often a space that wasnt
originally intended to be there, a space created
by the erosion of material that had previously
filled that space. Another meaning of space is the
blank area between two words. Thats a space
too!
The word Space stands between Music and
Architecture, and that is no coincidence.
Space only emerges between disciplines
such as music and architecture. Space is the
interplay that occurs in the interface where two
disciplines meet; it is the interspace between two
disciplines.
Both music and architecture are fairly clearly
defined fields. Both rest on a respectable
tradition. You can be trained to be a composer
or an architect. But what about space? Can
you make space, design it, create it? And what
exactly does space represent in this conceptual
trinity? And why is it there in the middle,
between those other two monuments?
Steen Eiler Rasmussen wrote a fantastic book
called Experiencing Architecture, in which he
describes in ten chapters how architecture can be
experienced. The final chapter is called Hearing
Architecture. In that chapter, he delves into
history to show how architecture has shaped
musical history. He shows that different styles of
architecture led to the composition of different
music, so the qualities of the architecture
could be used to maximum effect. Gregorian
chants, for instance, originated in the old St.
Peters Basilica. The slow, monophonic style of
liturgical singing characteristic of Gregorian
chants was dictated by the architecture of the
enormous basilica. The echoes lasted too long to
allow music that was lighter, higher or faster.
intrinsic space / Creating space
Space is the word between architecture and
music. The close connection between the shape
of the space and the sound of the space can be
perceived very well in churches and cathedrals.
When you walk into a cathedral, the height of
the columns soaring up to the roof is not all that
you experience; the specific sounds of wooden
chairs scooting over the floor and footsteps in
stone portals are absolutely certain to be part of
your perceptions as well.
Space is the immaterial and possibly even non-
sensory experience of the encounter between
architecture and sound. The experience is
non-sensory in that it lies in the connections
that you always have to make for yourself
between impressions of a very different nature,
impressions that enter your perception through
different senses.
Music and installations have played an
important role in my search towards making
space something that can be experienced. They
are interventions that serve to allow the space
to reveal itself in one way or another. They
accentuate the distance between what you see
and what you hear, between what you think you
perceive objectively and what proves in part
to be an experience created by imagination.
Musical interventions make it possible to
change the experience of the space and make it
palpably dynamic. You can heighten the tension
in that gap, create different possibilities for
experiencing space, in which each individual
(who after all wants to be in a consistent space)
will have to make personal choices and build
connections.
The strength of a good work of art, a good
building or good scenography is that it
can create space. Space in time. Between
disciplines. Between people. Between
concepts. In the intervening margin that exists
between people, concepts and disciplines, there
is space that can and must be filled by human
imagination. Stretching and manipulating
that margin and, in doing so, tickling the
imagination is the domain of art.
152
Neither the architect nor the scenographer
creates spaces made of stone, wood, metal or
glass; they create experiences in people. Or,
better: their work creates the conditions for the
space that people experience. I wanted to give
students the experience of using interventions
to influence the space, manipulate it and open
it up to be experienced in ways that often also
surprised them.
The interface between architecture and
music, the point where those two disciplines
meet, is an inspiring area for me to work in.
Inspiring, because both so strongly define how
space is experienced, but neither possesses the
exclusive ability to do so.
The two disciplines combine to create a
space that is only revealed in that point of
convergence. The precise way it will work can
only be conceived in part beforehand. Exactly
how peoples imaginations will be stirred, and
how you create the margin that which is left
unfilled that is needed for those imaginations
to work, is always a matter of action: seeking,
trying and observing for yourself. Gregorian
chants took form from listening closely to the
acoustic qualities of the St. Peters Basilica. It
is frequently necessary to enter the emptiness
and abandon the overarching perspective.
What does the space itself want? What does
it have to tell me? That sense of wandering
within the space is the most exciting process
in the artists profession. Going astray and
being unsuccessful are part of that process.
But it is in the almost inevitable failure
that we see precisely that which we can no
longer understand, no longer perceive. In
that moment, it has sprung up somewhere in
yourself: space.
intrinsic space / Creating space

Building number 1077,

2001, former Stork site in
Amsterdam.
Sound installation with
microphones and speakers
that can sense the acoustic
identity of a space by means of
a controlled feedback system.

153
intrinsic space / Creating space

(Un)Aimed, 2002.
Fort Werk Waalse Wetering,
Tull and t Waal. Sound
installation of vibrating steel
plates that respond to the
movement of the public inside
the fort. The installation
comments on the forts defence
function, rendered obsolete
as soon as it was built owing
to the introduction of the
aeroplane.

154
intrinsic space / Creating space

Installation for seeing

and meeting again, 1999.
Toussaintkade, The Hague.
Installation featuring rotating
speakers and light that reveal
the space in a composition
by means of sounds and light
movements.

155
intrinsic space / Creating space

Noorderkerk
This group of students of
architecture and scenography
made a performance in the
Noorderkerk, Amsterdam.
Small hats descended from
the air channels high up in
the church. Some of the hats
contained a speaker from
which recorded text rang out.
The inspiration for the texts
was to offer a path down for
the long-gone thoughts that
had found their way upwards
in the church over the years.

Theaterschool
The foyer of the Theaterschool
in Amsterdam was the venue
for this installation made
by students. The principle
behind the installation was to
render audible the use of the
space. With the aid of triggers
and a computer system,
sound became the buildings
dominant function.

156
intrinsic space / Creating space

Academy of Architecture
Ear-shaped shells adorned
the walls of the Academy of
Architecture. These shells
offered an acoustic view
through the walls, so to speak.
The boundary marked by the
wall was abolished to a certain
degree. The sounds of water
created an acoustic insight into
the world behind.

arcam
A group of students created
a mechanism that could play
the structure of the arcam
gallery building. Big, black,
round steel pipes served as
structure in the glass faade
to the water. Mechanisms
that could play these pipes by
hitting, stroking or blowing
them translated the physical
substance of the building into
sound.

157
Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
Master of Architecture Urbanism Landscape Architecture
Architects, urban designers and landscape architects learn
the profession at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture
through an intensive combination of work and study.
They work in small, partly interdisciplinary groups
and are supervised by a select group of practising fellow
professionals. There is a wide range of options within the
programme so that students can put together their own
trajectory and specialization. With the inclusion of the
course in Urbanism in 1957 and Landscape Architecture
in 1972, the aAcademy is the only architecture school in
the Netherlands to bring together the three spatial design
disciplines.
Some 350 guest tutors are involved in teaching every year.
Each of them is a practising designer or a specific expert in
his or her particular subject. The three heads of department
also have design practices of their own in addition to their
work for the Academy. This structure yields an enormous
dynamism and energy and ensures that the courses remain
closely linked to the current state of the discipline.
The courses consist of projects, exercises and lectures.
First-year and second-year students also engage in
morphological studies. Students work on their own or
in small groups. The design projects form the backbone
of the curriculum. On the basis of a specific design
assignment, students develop knowledge, insight and
skills. The exercises are focused on training in those
skills that are essential for recognising and solving design
problems, such as analytical techniques, knowledge of the
repertoire, the use of materials, text analysis and writing.
Many of the exercises are linked to the design projects.
The morphological studies concentrate on the making of
spatial objects, with the emphasis on creative process and
implementation. Students experiment with materials and
media forms and gain experience in converting an idea into
a creation.
159
During the periods between the terms there are
workshops, study trips in the Netherlands and abroad,
and other activities. This is also the preferred moment for
international exchange projects. The academy regularly
invites foreign students for the workshops and recruits
well-known designers from the Netherlands and further
afield as tutors.
Graduates from the Academy of Architecture are entitled
to the following titles: Master of Architecture (MArch),
Master of Urbanism (MUrb) or Master of Landscape
Architecture (mla). The Masters diploma gives direct
access to the Register of Architects (Stichting Bureau
Architectenregister, sba) in The Hague.
The Academy of Architecture is part of the Amsterdam
School of the Arts (ahk), as are the Theatre School, the
Amsterdam School for Music, the Netherlands Film and
Television Academy, the Academy for Art Education, and
the Reinwardt Academy. The ahk, which was founded in
1987, offers a full range of bachelors and masters courses
in the field of music, dance, theatre, film and television,
architecture, fine art and cultural heritage. The link with
fine arts education underlines the particular importance
that the Academy of Architecture attaches to the artistic
aspect in the professional practice of architects, urban
designers and landscape architects.
colophon

Editorial Board
Klaas de Jong
Aart Oxenaar
Machiel Spaan

Editors
Maarten Kloos
Machiel Spaan

Editor-In-Chief
Klaas de Jong

Translation
Billy Nolan

Copy Editing
Mark Speer

Photography
Justin Bennett, pp. 34, 36, 39, 40-41
M. Brinkgreve, p. 94
Cilia Erens, pp. 42, 47 (above), 48
Peter van der Heijden, pp. 112-114
Jord den Hollander, p. 115
Ruud Jonkers, pp. 26-27
Hanne Nijhuis, pp, 125, 128, 146, 156-157
Andreas Praefcke, p. 58
Rop te Riet, p. 47 (below)
Bart Visser, pp. 153-155
Dean Whiteside, p. 56

Selection of Quotes
Kim Verhoeven

Thanks to
arcam
Conservatorium van Amsterdam
Stichting Noorderkerkconcerten
de Theaterschool

Graphic Design
Studio Sander Boon
Amsterdam

Printing
Pantheon drukkers
Velsen-Noord

Binding
Van Waarden
Zaandam

2012 Amsterdam Academy of

Architecture

Architectura & Natura Publishers

www.architectura.nl

isbn
9789461400055

This publication was made possible

thanks to the financial support of the
Netherlands Architecture Fund.

160
biographies
Rob Metkemeijer (1948)
studied physics at the Delft
University of Technology,
where he graduated in acoustics
in 1973. He joined the Peutz
group as a consulting engineer
in acoustics and was a member
of the board from 1987 onwards.
He was responsible for the
department of concert hall and
theatre acoustics from 1991
onwards, when he took over
this position from Victor M.A.
Peutz, founder of the company.
He has served as acoustic
designer in numerous projects
for the following institutions:
Royal Concertgebouw,
Muziekgebouw aan t IJ, Beurs
van Berlage (Amvest Hall in
glass), bimhuis, Heineken
Music Hall, Royal Theatre
Carr (all in Amsterdam),
ircam (Paris), Royal Albert
Hall (London), Dr Anton
Philipszaal, Royal Theatre
(The Hague), Philharmonie
(Haarlem), De Spiegel (Zwolle)
and the Tonhalle (Dsseldorf ).
Aart Oxenaar (1958) studied
art history and archeology at
the University of Amsterdam.
With the support of the
Netherlands Organization for
Scientific Research, he has
conducted research into the
work of P.J.H. Cuypers. He
has worked for the Netherlands
Architecture Institute in
Rotterdam as a writer and
exhibition maker, and was the
Founding Coordinator of the
Centre for Architecture and
Urbanism in Tilburg. Since
1998 he has been Director of
the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture. He is active
as an advisor in the field of
architecture and planning, as a
member of the IJburg Quality
Team and chairperson of
the Committee for Building
Quality and Monuments in
Amsterdam and serves on the
Advisory Board for Spatial
Quality in Haarlem. In addition
to his work as an architectural
historian, with a focus on the
nineteenth century, he has
published on contemporary
architecture in the Netherlands.
In 2010 he obtained his
Ph.D. from the University of
Amsterdam with an extensive
publication on the architect
Pierre Cuypers, celebrated
designer of the Central
Station and Rijksmuseum in
Amsterdam, entitled P.J.H.
Cuypers en het gotisch rationalisme
(nai Publishers, Rotterdam).
Linda-Ruth Salter was a
pioneer in crossing discipline
boundaries when she
obtained a Ph.D. degree in
interdisciplinary studies from
Boston University in 1984.
Her doctoral dissertation
examined the nature of sacred
space in secular societies.
Additional research showed
the significance of place and
spatial memory in maintaining
group identity. Salter has
consulted in the area of
research and planning for a
successful built environment
in public housing, educational
and business spaces, and has
taught urban studies at Boston
University. Presently she
is associate professor in the
humanities and social sciences
at the New England Institute
of Technology, where she fuses
and integrates the fine arts,
technology and social sciences .
Blesser and Salter merged
their collective knowledge and
experience of the physical and
social sciences to create the
concepts of auditory spatial
awareness and its manifestation
as aural architecture. Spaces
Speak embodies their shared
philosophic bias: technology
changes the social and artistic
aspects of culture, while at the
same time, culture influences
the properties of technology,
invention and innovation.
Machiel Spaan (1966) is
an architect. He graduated
from the Department of
Architecture and Urban Design
at the Eindhoven University
of Technology in 1992 and is a
co-founder of the Amsterdam-
based architecture firm M3H
architecten. A hallmark of
M3Hs work is an approach
that engages with the design
problem and takes confluence
rather than conflict as its
starting point. Questioning
the physical, social, historical
and social context determines
the programme and the
architectural form in all
projects. The hidden potential
of the site is rendered visible
and can be experienced. M3H
is an architecture firm that
devotes attention to all facets of
design, from the urban scale to
the detail. Making and building
are key aspects. M3H has
designed and completed scores
of buildings in urban settings.
In addition to his practice,
Machiel Spaan has been actively
teaching since 1994. He has
focused on creating a sensory
experience of architecture in
educational projects such as
House for a Blind Person (2001),
Tastenderwijs (2004), The
Temporary Expert (2004-
2007) and Music, Space and
Architecture (2010).
Machiel Spaan has been head of
the Architecture Department
at the Amsterdam Academy of
Architecture since September
2007. In that capacity, he is
responsible for the quality of the
curriculum and organizes the
educational projects, important
motives for which are the
process of creation, the relation
with the arts and the social
context of Amsterdam.
biographies
Sjoerd Soeters (1947) graduated
from Eindhoven University of
Technology. After completing
his studies he opened his own
office in 1979 in his home on
Prinsengracht in Amsterdam.
In 1997 Jos van Eldonk became
a partner at the office, which
has since been known as
Soeters Van Eldonk Architects.
Soeters developed into the most
important postmodernist in
the Netherlands. Completed
in 1981, the Circus Zandvoort
amusement arcade is
characteristic of his early work.
Soeters has mastered a range
of stylistic approaches, all of
which he deploys depending on
the client, the type of building
and the location. He describes
the design position of the
office as follows: Because
the surroundings and the
history of the context are
of equal significance for the
eventual appearance, Soeters
Van Eldonk Architects make
deliberate use of different
architectural languages
and styles, which vary from
historical to symbolic to
modern.
The scope of work by Soeters
ranges from private houses
and residential complexes to
offices and urban schemes,
including plans for Java Island
in Amsterdam and the town
centre of Nijmegen.
The contemporary reuse of
traditional elements is also
apparent in the Haverlij
estate (2005), where Soeters
developed a plan for nine
large fortress-like residential
buildings set in a park
landscape.
Notable recent projects by
Soeters Van Eldonk include the
Piramides residential blocks
in Amsterdam, the plan for the
centre of Spijkenisse, and the
redevelopment of the sugar silos
in Halfweg.
After studying Jacob Voorthuis (1960)
telecommunications, Bart lectures in architecture
Visser (1972) made the switch and philosophyat the
to the combined faculty of Eindhoven University of
Sound and Vision at the Royal Technology.With a special
Academy of Art and the Royal interestin the relationship
Conservatoire in The Hague, between the spatial practice
where he graduated in 1999. of society anddesign, he has
His performances focus on his lectured widely in Europe
fascination for the meaning of and the Americas. He works
time and movement. He also as a critic and architectural
builds installations that set consultant at the concept
up a dialogue with the space stage of the design process.
they occupy through light and His current research project
sound. In recent years he has involves an ontology of use, the
concentrated on the interface attempt to put a new conception
between music, drama and of use and the useful at the very
dance, and he attempts to bridge centre of design thinking.
the gap between text, on the
one hand, and music, sound
and autonomous multimedia
installations, on the other hand.
In addition, he has participated
in many collaborative projects
with ZT Hollandia, Dick
Raaijmakers, Krisztina de
Chtel, Orkater and others as
an artist, composer, conductor,
dancer and performer. A
number of his works have been
performed at the Productiehuis
Rotterdam, including Everest
96. The music theatre
collective WILco features
Visser, composer Huba de
Graaff and writer Erik-Ward
Geerlings. Their complete
works include Lautsprecher
Arnolt, De Dood van Poppaea
and Diepvlees. As a teacher he
is affiliated with the faculties of
Theatre and Architecture at the
Amsterdam School of the Arts.