A WALK AROUND MUSIC
PROJECT NARRATIVE

Our ocular-centric tendencies have hindered the way we design.  As a culture, we are overwhelmed with images, which desensitize and alienate us, regarding our surroundings as a series of potential two-dimensional photographs.  As designers, we are trapped in an artistic visual game, disconnected from culture, society, and time, centered on rendering and photo opportunities and immediate visual impact.  Renderings are taken from the strange angles of bodiless observers, and with the help of technology, the design process has become a series of distant two-dimensional decisions.  Designing solely in this visual dimension creates a hollow retinal world, explaining the growing popularity of introspective activities such as meditation and yoga.

We must remember we are composers of volume, choreographers of motion, and sculptors of light and shadow.  Rather than regarding the buildings we are designing as distant objects on a computer screen, we must remember that buildings are our instruments.  We must imagine how they feel in our hands, how they sound, and how they age;  we should be able to play them with our eyes closed.  “A wise architect works with his/her entire body and sense of self.”1

Located in subterranean Detroit, The Sensorium utilizes the architectural materials of texture, scale, vibration, light, shadow, and spatial sequencing, translated from the musical notation of The Firebird Suite, by composer Igor Stravinsky, to evoke motion and elicit emotion.  Through a holistic synesthetic experience, the visitor sees sound, touches the rhythm of dance, listens to geometry, and walks around music.

First Place, Kossman Thesis Competition
Mies Crown Hall Americas Student Finalist
Archiprix Finalist and Participant Favorite
Long Listed for the Tamayouz Excellence Award

1. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley-Academy, 2005, p 13. Print.

Currently on display at The Pennsylvania State University, the artifacts act as an example of the notational coalescence of disciplines, and are each unique synthetically volumetric experiences.  By unifying our sensory responses with music and time, as well as the participatory haptic qualities of dance and motion, we can enhance sensory density, complexity, and dimensionality of our built world by creating what Edward Tufte, author of Escaping Flatland, refers to as “narratives of space and time.”