Architecture and Silence
Preamble
I have recently relocated to Liege, Belgium. Called “the burning city”, it is an industrial town whose nearby factories where developed by John Cockerill in the Dickensian age.
Liege is architecturally noisy and aurally as well. The riot of architectural styles, gothic cathetdral, arte noveau , multiple layers of post-war trendy architectures, backgrounded by the factories makes Liege very special to listen to. This is not a pitch for tourism. Liege is fiercely polluted, the air something to protect yourself from and the conservatives keeping open ear to Sarkhozy are only challenged by the even prouder working class folks who have liberal tendencies but also “la pierre dans il ventre” (a stone in the stomach), the stone referring to their homes which they value as their mothers. The architectural plans change with every new government, every five years. A city made up up of proud microsocieties, they often counter-punch a new plan after kicking the others out in a libidinous design fiasco that bears direct comparison to the rivalries between Brunilleschi and Borromini, the queens of that kind of classification-defying Mannerism that keeps Italy on top for historically anticipating too many Gehry-like protrusions. The topic is the new, massive rapid train station being installed in Liege. Its need to be properly visualized will lead to the destruction of the surrounding neighborhoods.
Architecture as formalist intrusion.
Architecture is concerned with making spaces and controlling what passes through these spaces. The two extremes that must be anticipated reflect the orderliness of society and the indeterminacy that this orderliness eventually gives rise to. Advertising and vandalism are two of these indeterminacies. We don’t know what will be advertised or we cannot tell yet who will be able to afford to adverstise. The architecture is also a form of advertising. The architecture is also a form of vandalism, an imposition of power. In turn, it will become a place where the dynamics of integration are challenged.
Art is a form of poesis. It requires mathematical thinking to make the transition from art to architecture. But a theory of archetypology, in the form of shapes which architecture inherits mimetically, pervades the architectural unconscious. Making architectural spaces comfortable is important. It is also important to not make them too comfortable. In some instances it is useful to make them deliberately uncomfortable. This reflects society’s silent war against the undesirables.*
It is not suprising then that architecture as power contruct is oriented toward visuality and verticality. Silence and visuality and ideal projections of order. Silence in this case does not mean no sound but rather, it is a silence about a silence, a silence about sound and it is this silence about sound in architecture I want to address. Sound is, as such, largely ungovernable. When sound will be considered an aspect of architecture, we shall have entered a new age when sound will be more precious to us, an age in which the earth and all what its atmosphere supports and calls life will have become a distant dream. For the moment, sound, functioning on the permeability of the binaural grid, is a plane of artistic intervention and vitality incarnate. Sound is a voice. Sound cannot be asked to shut up. The architecture that takes sound as a basis is going to be both visionary, nostalgic and revolutionary. The architecture that exists already is merely a battle-ground for the sounds of struggle.
There is a certain kind of social blindness in every situation of construction. We will tolerate much chaos in order to achieve a new visual environment. Indeterminate sound also is also tolerated. It is only ordered sound that society has a problem with. The rigidity of this order for sound is the plague of every creative musician and sound artist on the globe. It is also the premonition of the totalitarian order capitalism is quickly consuming and imposing upon every aspect of life. The appetite for destruction that this requires reflects the situation of clearing up congested spaces for constructions that make us, some of us, feel new. This also shows a genocidal strain in the mythology of populations that sense they are growing unsustainable. How we can learn to work with all aspects of our society depends on being able to listen more. How things look will need to become secondary to hearing how they actually are. This listening is not only a practice of abstracting sound and turning it into an interesting but politically neutral drone. It must involve listening to people. Just as the station is a point of transit, it is a gathering point for those in precarity. The situationist declaration concerning the flexibility of architecture depends not primarily on its visual projection but on developing the world from strategic points of listening to an environmentally solvent mentality.
The architecture of intrusion must be subjected to a hearing.
*Anecdote concerning loud radio on station platform p.a. used to drive away homeless people from benches in the less used section of Montpellier station is apropos here. This abusive, anti-social and “collaterally damaging” event evinces sound as weapon.
Note on layout for photos.
I am intending to present Guillemins Station upside down or from various viewpoints that are not designed to undermine (nor to flatter) Mr. Calavtravas’ design but are, instead, intended to show the current invisibility of the station. I interpret this crisis as an opportunity for intervention and re-evaluation. The photos in some instances will be replaced by paintings (not photo-shopped abstractions) that work with the geometrical force lines, in order to review these lines of force in terms of waves and therefore achieve an aural sound-score. To transform the visual lines into audible wave forms. In this way, I would like to suggest to planners the idea that the visualization of architectural spaces should be previewed in a perceptual manifold so that analytics can be informed by another sensibility.
Miscellaneous Notes.
The recent renovations of Berlins Alexanderplatz station. A wide open space, free for movement, is being closed precisely as the population of the city grows. Why?