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Last Updated: 2026-06-03 00:13:59
Abstract
This seminar attempts a translation from the world of experimental music and sound art to spatial thought. Drawing inspiration from the malleable and ephemeral medium of sound, notation and compositional principles will be explored as means of architectural design.
Objective
This course encourages students to explore the relationships between sound and architecture, integrating acoustic and auditory dimensions into their spatial thinking. The course teaches the importance of creative processes over final products, fostering dynamic design approaches through the understanding of abstract graphical representation, sequence, and indeterminacy. A recursive back and forth between sensing, representing, and narrating intends to augment the students’ ability to think about change as a factor in architecture. Through the lens of "Sonic Flux", students are asked to listen and map a spatial environment according to its vibratory events and rhythms. With the help of case studies from experimental composition and sound art, the environment is then used to imagine a process of transformation. Sound is used as a vehicle to understand space's temporal dimension. Sonic knowledge, the knowledge of the invisible and what remains unheard, opens up spatial design to an ecological mentality in which the opposition between figure and ground is blurred, as the relational dimension between them becomes key. Through understanding abstract sonic strategies, from deep listening and notation to modulation and indeterminacy, we will be able to conceive of a renewed ecological mentality in spatial thought. The seminar's objective is to conceive of opportunities for transforming situations, milieus, and environments through modulation: the bending of the existing into something new, a creation of specificity from what is latent in a given environment.
Content
In this seminar, sound is used as a vehicle to imagine the transformation of spatial environments in time. The overall structure of the seminar is set by an overarching exercise, which add up to a small project: Step 1: Listen to an environment of your choice and capture its rhythmic qualities through a Listening Journal. Step 2: Notate the environment's temporal structure through a Rhythm Map, using techniques drawn from case studies in sound art and mapping. Step 3: Propose a transformation of your environment through a Scenario Montage—an image depicting how a spatial environment may transform in time. The exercises will be started in class and completed at home. Students' work throughout the seminar will culminate in a collective presentation and may be featured in a subsequent exhibition or publication.
General Information
- Language
- English
- Levels
- BSC
- Frequency
- Semesterly recurring
Examination
- Type
- graded semester performance
Course Components
| Type | Title | Time & Place | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| seminar |
Territories of Sound
No teaching on March 16 (Seminar Week) and the last two weeks of the semester.
To participate in the seminar, students are asked to provide a short motivation letter (200-300 words) outlining their specific interests, prior engagements, or expectations in relation to the topic. This letter should be submitted by email to
by Monday, February 16.
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2 h weekly |