The Archive of Free Thinking

“Interiors (of buildings) are like large instruments, collecting sound, amplifying it, transmitting it elsewhere.”

Peter Zumthor

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Sound, like colour, offers architects a material with a wide spectrum of potential applications.  Sound in buildings can create atmosphere, rekindle memories and generate emotions. It can repurpose and refine private and public space, and it can be efficient, requiring minimal construction, environmental and economic costs. By looking at sound as a design tool, we can ‘amplify’ the emotional capacity of spaces, to profound effect.

Traditionally, architectural studies have overemphasised the importance of the visual; analysis has focused primarily on the structural elements, and consequently underemphasised the haptic qualities of architecture. As Juhani Pallasmaa argued in his influential work ‘The Eyes of the Skin’, ‘Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imagination and dreams, homeless’. By expanding our understanding of architecture to include all the senses, we can open up a new way of thinking, one more sensitive to the interaction between people and buildings to create atmospheres and emotions. Multi-sensory approaches also create potential new avenues to shape and determine space. Zumthor’s statement captures the potential of sound as a building material. He compares an ‘interior’ to an ‘instrument’, as both are designed by craftsmen and both shape and magnify sound. In both cases, the object becomes, to an extent, defined by the sound. His ideas echo Pallasmaa’s argument that architecture should be a sensory project. It should not just consider the ‘eye’ or ‘intellect’, which allows the designer to keep a safe distance away from the work. The architect should relate to the entire spectrum of senses and should sit with the object as a translator into a sensory experience. The power of the relationship between buildings and sound is demonstrated by how architectural constraints have determined the structure of music. European church music was played indoors, and the cavernous design of the church interiors was symbiotic with the long notes and reverberation of choral music. With the advent of chamber music, played in smaller rooms, composers like Bach could write intricate scores, harpsichord pieces, with many changes of key. Meanwhile, African ceremonial music was often played outdoors, resulting in fast beats and loud instruments. Sound is often reduced to a technical issue, a question of acoustics. It is thought of only in terms of its ‘physical energy, measured by calculating pressure waves and managed via applied surfaces and construction assemblies, which then dissipate the pressure waves’. This focus on the scientific, rather than the experiential, limits the designer in terms of how they can utilise the space. This view is problematic largely because it reduces sound to a secondary role: design the building and then fix the acoustics. Instead, sound should be regarded key component of architecture at the beginning of the design process.

Sound is valuable in architecture as a building material, but it is also a metric to study a building in use, both physically and socially. Sound, acoustic testing is used to assess the structural integrity and quality of a building. Sound can detect defects like voids, cracks, or poor compaction within building materials or structures. Measuring sound can also indicate that a space is working well socially. In the medieval bastides in Southern France, villages were designed around a covered market (rather than the church), and they prospered because of their ability to attract people, stimulate engagement and support commerce. This can be seen in the village of Lagrasse on market day, with sounds of people talking and laughing. The sounds themselves are a measurement of social exchange and stand in contrast to silence in many modern supermarkets. Sound can create atmosphere and evoke happiness. Pallasmaa compares the ‘acoustic harshness of an uninhabited and unfurnished house … to the affability of a lived home, in which sound is refracted and softened by the numerous surfaces of objects of personal life’ to show the way sound makes a building more pleasant through its association with life. By drawing attention to the way sound is changed as a place changes, the material detritus of a busy life ‘softens’ the sound and the experience of the space. Sound also recalls memories and emotions. Zumpthor is calmed by the sound of ‘noises my mother made in the kitchen. They made me feel happy’, and as a result, he looks at ways to restore such memories in his buildings. He says, ‘there are buildings that have wonderful sounds, telling me I can feel at home, I’m not alone’. Architects can also use sound design for functional reasons. The Nightingale Floor of uguisu-bari in Nijo Castle, in Kyoto was deliberately designed to creak, warning the inhabitants of any intruders. 

Sound can stimulate more than emotions; it can define and create space. As Zumthor alludes to, sound and music are powerful connecting tools, ‘collecting’ people together through art and movement, and when applied to architecture, can ‘amplify’ the experiential capacity of a space. This is often not fully recognised, as Pallasmaa says, ‘a space is understood and appreciated through its echo as much as through its visual shape, but the acoustic percept usually remains as an unconscious background experience’. Sound can also create new spaces, particularly in public places. This is most effective when the incongruity of space and sound is utilised; these instances are where the unusualness of the sound disrupts our assumptions about the use of the space, drawing attention to the sound and modifying behaviour in relation to it. Playing classical music in Japanese train stations has been demonstrated to create a new space with reduced disorderly behaviour, vandalism and violence, while also increasing passengers’ everyday experience. Alternatively, a DJ deck can turn a space into a party, a collective event, with increased activity and energy. Public parks, underused, particularly in the evening, can become economically and socially vibrant and also safer with the introduction of music. Similarly, musicians playing at a bandstand can encourage people to dance, to linger and watch, which can readily be translated into economic activity and social cohesion. These events can then create opportunities for restaurants and shops that further create a sense of community. Proof of the power of this approach is evident when the situation is reversed and we engineer silence. The removal of music, at a consistent and agreed-upon time, communicates that the space is no longer in use, and people should go home. In achieving these effects, sound is evidently an efficient tool to enhance and create value out of established and also inefficient spaces. Furthermore, new space can be created without significant construction, environmental or economic costs. 

With these reinforcing relationships between sound and buildings, sound in all its forms should neither be ignored nor marginalised in the design of meaningful and efficient architectural design.