TED Talk: Why Architects Need to Use their Ears / Julian Treasure
In architecture we talk about space and form. We talk about experience and meaning. All of these qualities are inextricably the sensory experience of light, touch, smell and sound. Sound expert Julian Treasure asks architects to consider designing for our ears, citing that the quality of the acoustics of a space affect us physiologically, socially, psychologically and behaviorally.
More after the break.
Bernhard Leitner: Sound Spaces
“I can hear with my knee better than with my calves.” This statement made by Bernhard Leitner, which initially seems absurd, can be explained in light of an interest that he still pursues today with unbroken passion and meticulousness: the study of the relationship between sound, space, and body. Since the late 1960s, Bernhard Leitner has been working in the realm between architecture, sculpture, and music, conceiving of sounds as constructive material, as architectural elements that allow a space to emerge. Sounds move with various speeds through a space, they rise and fall, resonate back and forth, and bridge dynamic, constantly changing spatial bodies within the static limits of the architectural framework. Idiosyncratic spaces emerge that cannot be fixed visually and are impossible to survey from the outside, audible spaces that can be felt with the entire body. Leitner speaks of “corporeal” hearing, whereby acoustic perception not only takes place by way of the ears, but through the entire body, and each part of the body can hear differently.
- George Kargl, Fine Arts Vienna
AD Classics: Le Cylindre Sonore / Bernhard Leitner
Architecture and Sound create spaces with changing flexible contours. They create invisible territories which by not being limited by physical boundaries increase their impact. Of course, one argues that architecture is visual and expresses the will to establish limits and boundaries. While these boundaries are elementary, they cannot convey the complete adventure of architecture. Through its very essence the inside formulates an outside. And the exterior of a building creates further spaces, it gives rise to the city and all the subtle interconnections which make for the richness of the city.
