musical form; architectural sound
an interdisciplinary study
Program: a composite center dedicated to three interrelated or even overlapped disciplines, namely Music, Art, and Architecture. Involves a hybrid scheme of design studio space, gallery, student lounge, and multi-purpose lecture spaces that fulfills the requirement of each of the three “clients.”
There is a certain open-ended quality in Studio 8: Trace. This definitely has the highest heuristic value of all the projects presented in this book, since to a certain extent it has reexamined the traditional means of form-conception, and strongly suggests new directions in architectural design.
The objective of studio 8 is simple and lucid: through exploring how architecture might act as a recording device, to push the possibilities of formal conception to the extreme. Crystallization of concept into built form through the building program is merely a representation of the concept, and not the ultimate goal. The studio did not assign any fixed program for the final structure; the nature of the program (compiled by the author) of a cross-disciplinary design studio itself actually manifests a particular outlook towards the discipline of Architecture, and this is further reflected in the design approach of the gallery part of the structure.
During the design process, I have explored two distinct approaches: the “X” series that catalyzes the overall scheme, and Notation and Interpretation that focuses on the gallery portion of the program.
X Series
X Series
Essentially, X1 to X4 are four imitations of Peter Eisenman’s studies Cities of Artificial Excavation. But unlike the Wexner Center, X series floats in mid-air — it does not have any site to serve as a datum. Instead, two pairs of Architectural precedents are adopted as sources of the artificial excavation operations. In other words, X series does not recollect the history of any site by deconstruction (or construction) of its topography, but recollects the history of the Architecture discipline (maybe “historical topography?”). Through juxtaposition and amalgamation of these graphical documentations, layered forms are generated.
As an elementary decomposition or excavation exercise, the X Series is crucial to the whole design process, as it has served as the starting point of form conception. Similar to both Eisenman and Tschumi’s approaches, X Series is performed with little or no reference to the program. With no practical constraints, the exercise can therefore attain maximum integrity with respect to the original ideal of deconstruction. It is only after this that the program and the building site enter the concept. It might be misleading to label the approach as an example of “function follows form,” but at least this method has somewhat reversed the traditional design mind-set.
After the development of X1 to X4, the program enters the project and anchors itself in the combined form generated from the X Series.
Notation and Interpretation
Notation and Interpretation
The second part of the project is another attempt to make architecture a recording device. As a part of the cross-disciplinary thesis Musical Form; Architectural Sound, it also carries a separate objective: to provide a new option in the much discussed relationship between the two virtually different art forms: Music and Architecture.
Comparison of the two art forms is far from arbitrary; in fact, the earliest acknowledgement of Music in the Architecture discipline is found as early as Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture. Throughout the years, studies of this relationship evolved from such physical matters as proportion to discussions of metaphysical issues like perceptions of the two art forms. In the article Harmony and Discord, Brian Ferriby has made the following conclusion after studying various texts by architects ranging from Vitruvius to Boulleé: “…Since there is a theoretical relationship between music and architecture (referring to the texts), is it not also possible that current trends in music theory and composition are a relevant departure point for architects to incorporate a deeper level of cultural meaning into the built environment?”
Steven Holl’s Texas Stretto House is one example of such translation. In his scheme, Holl has successfully applied the formal structure of Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Iannis Xenakis has gone even further by blurring the boundary between the two, thus redefining (or at least promoting reconsideration of) the two disciplines with his compositions in both art forms.
In this project, I have extracted a portion of the program (the gallery) and applied to it the study of music-architecture translation. Perhaps the approach I have taken is fundamentally different from any such translation ever attempted by architects. The Sequential Gallery, so named for its recording quality, has applied the method introduced in A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff) as based on Schenker’s theories, an important music theorist of the modern era. Through multiple levels of diagrammatic studies, the music excerpt (Flying to Salk by Joseph Vitarelli) is translated visually, and is finally depicted in built form. Edmund Burke’s studies of the sublime provides a key for translation, as such qualities as musical tension and resolution can be compared with and converted to Burke’s example of physical qualities (visual clarity, smoothness, etc.).
As the method aims to construct a model of human perception for music, the Sequential Gallery is not merely a physical translation of music (as in the Stretto House), but a translation of the interpretation of music.
