Let's continue for another day the thread about soundscapes that started on Monday by looking at the installation “Making the walls quake as if they were dilating with the secret knowledge of great powers”. This rather long title taken from Charles Dicken's Dombey and Son defines the “sound sculpture” by Katarzyna Krakowiak at the Polish Pavilion at the 13th Venice International Architecture Biennale.
The sculpture is actually the entire building that has been amplified and redesigned to allow the walls to quake, the ventilation system to drone and everyday activities coming from the other pavilions to be heard as well.
The most interesting thing about this project is actually the research behind it, that shows how even centuries ago people seemed to pay a lot of attention to the possibilities that buildings had to absorbe, filter and amplify sounds.
The curators and researchers behind the Polish Pavilion mention for example Elizabethan theatres, but also famous writers who, in their literary works, described the complex sounds buildings can produce, including Charles Dickens and Francis Bacon (remember the sound-houses in his New Atlantis?).
“Making the walls quake...” consists in a stark and naked building transformed through a sonic process: by deforming the building's floor and walls, renewing the ventilation system and reinforcing the frequencies, ambient sounds are amplified.
The team behind the project went through a series of complicated acoustic measurements and calculations and enhanced the experience of being immersed in sound by tilting the floor and the walls at a slight angle and introducing a wooden floor to influence sound propagation.
The artificial ceiling was also dismantled to streamline the air trajectories and open the ventilation system to the noises coming from the buildings surrounding it, while the plastered apse located right opposite the main entrance was restored to its function to reflect the sounds appearing in the vestibule. The vibrations of the walls were also translated into sounds and a network of sensors and cables was added to entwine the pavilion and the adjacent buildings and mark the continuity of sound.
The main aim of this installation is to prove that it's possible to work with the medium of sound architectonically and sculpturally to design space, and that buildings can talk and architecture can be heard.
After all, as Danish architect Steen Eiler Rasmussen pointed out in his essay 1959 "Experiencing Architecture", didn't the sewage tunnels in the final scenes of Carol Reed's The Third Man produce memorable sounds and noises?
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