'Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement' is an architectural installation that is the result of geometrical experiments and investigations of 20th century music undertaken by the Städelschule Architectural Class during the last six months.
The resulting investigations have included encounters with work spanning from the experiments and recordings of Glenn Gould, via compositions of the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, to the varied work of Brian Eno.
The exhibition attempts to make sense of the evasive interface between time and space in architecture through the logics of music and matter. It presents a speculative synthesis of the temporal and auditory with the presumed stasis of the architectural object. In this sense, the exhibition continues a tradition that in modern architectural terms revolves around the Philips Pavilion Poème Electronique, by Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis, and Edgar Varèse (1958). In comparison, 'Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement' is a modest endeavour, but it explores the same vibrant interface that bears on our senses and to which architecture contributes more than material silence.
The fourteen objects are presented as floating, effervescent singularities within a space conceived as a whole, embracing and silent soundscape. The fourteen pieces are scaled, transformed and completed in the fifteenth piece, the visual backdrop formed by the photographic banners.
Conceived and directed by professors Ben van Berkel, Sanford Kwinter, and Johan Bettum with Luis Etchegorry.
The exhibition by the Städelschule Architecture Class takes place in Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt am Main, from February 8 to April 30, 2008
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