Listening to space.

Space is aural. Architecture is about shaping space in a noisy world, so listen...

Architecture and sound inter-relate in:

• musical proportion
• architectural acoustics
• sound in space.

Today's listening agenda can be described as:

• listening to space - the activities of a room and how the architecture shapes and manipulates sound to create a healthy functioning environment
• listening to users - their aspirations, views, and intelligence about a building, street or district, an essential prerequisite for making change.

Architecture is so often conceived as a visual rather than a spatial art. The invisible acoustic dimension of space and community activity can be overlooked. In fact our three dimensions of space are embodied in the inner ear. To listen is to begin to understand size, materials, activity and ambience, what is best now, what is most open to improvement, without constraint what users want, and what will work in new built spaces. Architecture is bruit reality - richer and deeper than designs on paper - whose deeper resonances link human experience through music to the natural cycles and vibrations of nature.

Urban Renewal Through Music
Since communities began, gathering together for an act of performance has been an essential binding element in the collective psyche. Performance bonds spectator and performer as co-dependent participants into an activity that transcends normal experience.
In music resonation reaches to the deepest issues of humanity caught up in the immense vibration of the city and of nature. It is an activity at once intimate, corporate and global. Heaven and earth meet, and the effect is healthy and life-enhancing. This refreshment of the soul is the goal of a performance space for live music in an electronic age. Performance at this deepest level is discontinuous from normal civic life - it relates more to the city of the collective imagination than to the actual city. Opportunities for urban renewal through music are in tying back the creative power unleashed by performance into the townscape and civic structures that already exist.

Marcus Beale's background is as a composer and musician composing ballets and performing with the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. His forthcoming book - 'Sensuality and Proportion - a primer on sound in architecture' due for publication in 2008. Visit the Sensuality and Proportion website for more:
philophony.com – Sensuality and Proportion

Related Essays & Articles:
The University of Westminster
Sound Media Research Group (SMRG)
“Architecture as Interactive Music”
Wed 27th September 2000
The City as Music - Some Conceptual Tools