THE SOUND OF ARCHITECTURE

Extract

There is a widespread perception that music and architecture are profoundly dissimilar, far removed from each other in the creative spectrum. While music is regarded as ephemeral, transient, involving vibration, pitch and time – you hear it, you feel it, its beauty is assigned to your memory – the general response to architecture is fundamentally different. Those homogeneous, concrete volumes and solid, three-dimensional forms are thought to occupy a permanent, static and unyielding part of our environment, a constant reminder of its unique presence in time, unrelated to any other art-form. Architecture just does not float away into space like music – as some might fervently wish! But music and architecture cannot possibly exist independently in hermetically sealed compartments – they are inexorably bonded together by their very nature and by the cultural history that surrounds them.