Diploma Unit Two. Architectural Association School of Architecture

Tools for Architecture is a research unit based at the Architectural Association in London formed by a team of MArch AA Diploma students and lead by Space Popular directors Lara Lesmes and Fredrik Hellberg.

Investigating how Architecture helped Music Evolve


In this studies, I was looking at the ways in which space complements music, and in particular how architecture helped music evolve. In short: if these spaces hadn’t been built, these music genres wouldn’t have existed.

The point is to look at which space complement which type of music and why?

 

 

In parallel, I was looking at spaces that have been built from music, and for music. In this case the Philips Pavilion in 1958 designed by Xenakis and Le Corbusier.  The design stemmed from Xenakis’ Metastasis composition’s score.

Unlike John Cage, Xenakis’s compositions weren’t aleatoric, they were based on a stochastic mathematical process that “calculated” music.

The space was designed to be an “audiovisual” experience and for the experience to be rythmed by music: visitors were to enter by groups of 50 at intervals of 10 minutes. In the transitional entrance space, a transition piece was played in a space of darkness; from there they would enter a space of light, sound and visual images, and finally leave through what they referred to as a “digestion exit”