the classical music era started in 1750. So, you mean more like how (renaissance music) like the Renaissance period.

lol.. yeaaa...

i had a co-worker transpose a few bars from a sonata onto a facade.

This sort of problem appears frequently in undergraduate theses. Truth be told, there is no one way to do it, and the only measure of your success in school will be how convincingly you convey your interpretation.

Any architectural thesis* of this sort can be addressed like so:

Ask the question: "How is [your subject] architectural?"

Ask yourself - what is interesting/remarkable/unique about [your subject]?

Ask yourself - how is that like architecture?

Formulate a rule or logic derived from the study of your subject

Apply it to a building program. Doesn't matter what it is, or if it is in any way related to [subject]. Better if it doesn't, since then the architectural solution is about [subject] and not about [subject] as program.

Done!

THANKS houseofmud! I also read somewhere that 'GOOD' music a great beginning, middle & end, and so too should architecture. Also, their is a climax in the song or a series of climaxes just like good architecture should have.

Well.. I am not in thesis, I'm only in 2nd year. We have to Listen to a song and interpret it within a building. I don't want to take the song literally and have a slow progression and then have an architectural feature that just bombards the user- just the climax of a song.

Well, I could be wrong, but i think a lot of people are doing it this kind of way.. I just wanted to get in more depth and extract the music.

Maybe it is a little too much i am asking for.. i dunno

BUT thanks again for the tips... i will definitely ask myself those questions during my process.

I think this topic is particularly interesting; I studied music in college and now I am in architecture school, and the similarities between music and architecture are what makes the jump from one to the other make a lot of sense.

First, you should listen to music while you think about scale. Similar to the way a theme repeats itself in architecture, like a certain geometry or proportional relationship, the same kind of repetition happens in music. Listen for patterns that happen within the music at the large scale of the whole piece (the whole building), or just a phrase (one room), or between groups of just a few notes (details). You can find patterns in melodies, rhythms, textures, transitions, harmonies, and more. Scale, i think, is just as important in music as it is in architecture.

Second, do some research about different forms that happen in music; there are sonatas, fugues, rondos, fantasias, and much more. These forms are like the "structure" or guiding rules inside of which all of the patterns and relationships of notes, rhythms, and harmonies happen. Like architecture, different forms are directly linked to different time periods. Sonatas, for instance, have (generally) three clear sections: The beginning (exposition), in which the thematic material is presented, the middle (development) in which there are many iterations of the thematic material, and the end (recapitulation) in which the material from the beginning is repeated. Using this overall structure, there is endless flexibility for playing with patterns, repetition, and scale, and even for breaking the "rules" of the structure itself. This form could be compared to, for example, beaux-arts buildings that have a clearly articulated symmetry and logic of sequence that use repeated elements and ornaments throughout.

Third, think about context and its relationship to the music and the architecture. If you are particularly interested in Renaissance music as it relates to architecture, religion (for instance) was a particularly huge driving force for form in music composition and in architecture. One prominent example of this is Brunelleschi's dome and Dufay's Nuper Rosarum Flores motet, in which the composer uses the physical proportional relationships of the double-walled dome as music proportions in his composition. Composers were equally obsessed with perfect proportions, nature, and the human body. I'm sure that you can also find relationships between musical and architectural form when it comes to economic or political context as well - this would be a place to start when it comes to thinking of the cause of similarity between music and architecture.

Sorry, long post, but I hope this helps!

Check Architecture as a Translation of Music: (Pamphlet Architecture 16)

http://www.amazon.com/Architecture-Translation-Music-Pamphlet-16/dp/1568980124

...yawn....

this is soooo 1988. tell your professor to get their head out of the past and engage the present.

lol treekiller, however, it is a local competition... and the requirements asks for it.

studioRIOT,
as for the different forms of music.. do composers usually mix those together? or do they just use one form for one song? kinda like how the doric order... where they only used either doric, corithian, or ionic on one structure- back in classical architecture

--well that is what popped in my mind when you mentioned that--

I noticed that Steven Holl's STRETTO HOUSE - was built for someone who loved music... and so the STRETTO form of music was used for the client's home.

I'm with treekiller. Even if you're not engaging the present, this whole "buildings are stories" bullshit is kind of aggravating. The better question is how many people can sight read? How many people looking at your project can sight read sheet music?

In terms of "classical architecture" as in "architecture of antiquity," there is absolutely 100% no musical record known. We barely know the instruments the Greeks and the Romans played.

I'd take a more kinetic approach and try to create a building that makes music either by engaging the users (bells, chimes, machinery, clockwork, interactive components) or generates random sounds based on a reactionary method. you could even do something with ridges or panels that if you drag a stick across them or hit them with a stick, produce different notes.

Hell, key the bars in handrails so that when you drag a key across the railings, it plays ode to joy (that's my idea I just invented but you're free to use it with due credit).

if architecture is frozen music then all you have to do is make architecture and you will have achieved frozen music. problem solved!

Sure it's probably a "dumb question" -- but teachers struggle to think of ways to engage their students, and so problems like this one are perennial fodder in the classroom. Students who get the most out of their school experience are the ones who involve themselves with vigor -- so find a way to "make something" of every challenge.

Music is invisible order (or, in some cases, disorder), experienced through the passage of time. Architecture is visible order (or, ditto) experienced both instantly and through movement, which implies time. So, there are similarities and dissimilarities between the two disciplines. What are the similarities ? That could be a place to start.

What are typical architectural ordering systems ? (Don't be confused by "the orders" of classical architecture; that's only a subset of the kind of order I'm talking about.) What are typical musical ordering systems ? Hint: song and poetry rhyming modes, like A-A-B-A-B-B-C-C.

you can also check notation-systems, from Xenakis, John Cage to early-Libeskind, Tschumi

How can you dismiss this as passe or irrelevent??

The main way music and architecture is related is by proportion. Simple proportional relationships have been made in architecture and music, from Palladio to Schindler, that are based on octaves. 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 2:1 etc.

Schindler based his proportional system on standard construction sizes, mainly 48" and 16". The brilliance of his system was that is was both the most economical from a construction standpoint and harmonic from a musical standpoint.

This is particularly relevant today because his system was both harmonic and green..

silverlake, the only problem with that (unless you're a ruskie) is that up until the very modern era (john cage, henry cowell), almost all music classical music is based off the Bach variation.

The Bach variation is not proportion but pattern. There might be proportion in the pattern but I doubt there is any significant number to finding out the proportion ratios to bach etudes by measuring the distance between notes and in rhythm.

The better question is would anyone "get it" without having it explained to them?

i just re-read the thread and i see a lot about proportion, scale, pattern, etc. but little mention of emotive capabilities of music (and architecture).

so i would suggest to .zXy. to listen to the piece of music and write down descriptive words that are not necessarily 'musical' such as: hard/soft, smooth/rough, warm/cold, engaging/off-putting, fractured/cohesive, and so on. you're trying to figure out how to translate the music into architectural terms and that's one thing that will help you make design decisions.

if you can convey the 'feeling' of the music into the architecture then no one has to literally 'get it' as in they will get a similar feeling from both the music and the architecture.

of course, you can always just do something cool and figure out how it relates to the music after the fact (and there will always be ways that they relate). that is a process that is usually frowned upon but it's perfectly valid.

Architecture might also be compared to

poetry

sea life

dance

apparel

food

cars, trains, boats, planes

clouds

board games

etc

^ exactly

so don't get too hung up on understanding music, what it is, how it's composed. it's just a way to get you to start talking about architecture.

SDR don't forget my favorite comparison: trees!

Exactly. The point is not to find some right answer for how music MUST relate to architecture -- the point is to find, in the music, some kind of inspirational basis for your building form -- whatever it might be. The music is meant to be the point of departure -- not the answer.

So : listen to the music and ask yourself what you are drawn to most in it. Is it the rhythm, the organizational structure? Is it the interplay between various instruments? Is it the emotional tone of the melody? Is it one particular instrument that calls to you, and the stands out in its relationship to the rest of the instruments? Do you hate the piece entirely? If so, why? Is there a certain cadence that resonates with you? These are just random examples : you need to begin by asking yourself questions about the music, and find that one thing that speaks to you. Then delve into the mechanics of exactly what that one thing is : what are the exact, precise elements that make it up? what are their relationships to other elements in the music? What are the essential mechanics of how these relationship work?

Once you can parse these things down to their essential mechanical parts, you can start to figure out how they might relate to the experience, and the form, you are trying to create in your own architecture.

late 80's/early 90's vintage notwithstanding, here is Steven Holl's Stretto House, one of the more self-consciously intentional music-to-architecture transpositions: http://www.stevenholl.com/project-detail.php?type=houses&id=26&page=1

for fun (hehe.... this is one of the least fun computer applications out there - DH is a musician and uses Finale for transcriptions; the only time I have heard worse cursing is when I am trying to strong-arm AutoCAD into doing what I want it to do) download a copy of Finale Notepad. It used to be a free download; now it is $10 (http://www.finalemusic.com/notepad/), but I think a demo is available for free still.

just watched a little film about jean prouve's house. it was built with left over parts from his failed venture in post world war II housing prototypes from a factory he ran. anywaze he made a little analogy of working on variations within a system ala bach.

I student at McGill University explored this topic as her thesis project. I forget her name but if you contact the school and ask for Professor Zuk or Professor Davies they could probably help you track her down or lead you to her research.

I would say that music and architecture are related in that they are both based on a system of relative proportions. Notes in a chord and then chord progressions all play off how they relate to what came before and then inform what may cone next. This works in architecture as well. The movement between compressed to open space, dark to light, busy rooms to solitary one. It also works as an analogy for proportions of windows to mass, the rhythm of structural elements, etc.

-Lucas Gray

vado where'd you find the film? I've been using prouve's work as examples for awhile and would to see it.

its on ThIs! Manta!

He looks around, around
He sees angels in the architecture
Spinning in infinity
He says Amen! and Hallelujah!

Paul Simon

Frank had a term he used which might be useful in defining details
often found on the fascia of his buildings: He called it, "Eye Music."
This can also be found on alot of Fay Jones Projects along with that of Bruce Goff.

A friend has extended that to include the various perforated decorations that Wright included, especially in the later work -- and the complex and repetitive shadows and silhouettes that these perforations cast and create, inside and out.