For the last eight years, Belgian architect Kwinten Crauwels has been gradually building one of the internet’s most extensive, detailed and informative music encyclopedias. Called Musicmap, the project is Crauwels’ attempt at visually explaining all known popular musical genres since 1870 in an interactive, “genealogical” map. The aim wasn’t just to define musical types, but to show how they influence and give rise to one another as well. Crauwels himself has likened Musicmaps to a Google Maps for music.

Crauwels still holds his day job as an architect, but plans on continually improving Musicmap, ultimately so that it may complement juggernaut music databases like Spotify. While he knows no such service can be perfect, he hopes Musicmap can still provide a structured experience for exploring and learning about musical genres. Our Out of the Box interview delves into his musical pursuits and filmmaking dreams, alongside being a practicing architect. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Where did you study architecture?

I studied architecture at the University of Leuven in Belgium. There are actually two different courses [of architecture at the school], I studied what they call here Engineer Architect. That’s a combination of civil engineer and architect at the same time. It’s because architecture wasn’t on a university level before in Belgium. It is now, but it wasn’t and that’s the other course which I followed was in university level. It’s very complex. It’s typical Belgium. So yeah it’s kind of like an engineer architect, but when it comes to an everyday basis, it is pretty much the same.

At what point in your life or education did you decide to pursue architecture?

At 18 years I thought long and hard about what I wanted to study, and the only thing I knew for sure is that it had to be very creative, and I wanted to do anything as long as it was I decided that I was going to be an architect/director. That was my life goal back then.creative—and I wanted to do also everything that was creative. So I could not really choose. Therefore I tried to minimize the number of occupations, and then I decided that I was going to be an architect/director. That was my life goal back then. If I could combine those two jobs, then I could have some sort of outlet for any kind of creativity that comes to mind. That was the idea which—it is still basically the idea. I had many ambitions.

What kind of film are you interested in?

I wanted to do just fictional, no animation or something like that, no documentary. Just like a basic drama. I like psychological films and a slight touch of philosophical films, films that make you reflect upon society... I like Pi which is Darren Aronofsky’s debut film… And I like Memento, very nice film… I like American Beauty and I also like very much romantic films, psychedelic fantasy films which are sort of still realistic, like Tim Burton’s Big Fish.

Do you imagine, at some point, leaving architecture entirely to pursue these other interests?

I like architecture a lot. It’s kind of a love-hate relationship with architecture I guess, because it can be… it’s a special profession. I think that if I hadn't been an architect than I would be very jealous of architects.

I think it would look like a really, really cool job if you are not an architect, but it’s always like the grass is greener on the other side. It’s kind of that, but it’s a good profession for me because it’s a balance between the rational and the emotional, creativity.

Many architects think bigger than what they are supposed to think. They are trained in think about society and the future of society and how we should make the world a better place, which is something that comes with the territory even though many people don’t know that. People outside architecture think that’s just something that’s really cool about their job. So I don’t think that I could just leave architecture at a young age and never come back, but I could certainly leave it for quite some time, especially if it would allow me to pursue a career in film, then that gets the priority.

when I saw some of the maps which were mediocre in popularity, then I thought: I can do this better.Of course I would kill one darling to achieve another darling that’s there. But I still have some dreams for architecture. It would be very cool to design something without budget restraints, that is something unique. I always had the idea of a music chapel, which is a chapel where you can go inside and you can listen to your favorite music and it’s open for everyone. I think that would be a really cool idea. So it’s a place where people can gather and then can talk. It’s very experimental. It requires a different approach to social behavior because people have to gather; they have to listen to other people’s music and then wait, and then they have to agree on, now it’s my time to play and now it’s your time to play. It’s like those are the things that make an architect—that makes architecture—very interesting.

It’s designing new buildings with new functions that were not done before. This is what made architecture very cool in the 60s and the 70s, because that was the time when a lot of new buildings were being designed, like supermarkets and swimming pools and sports places that were never, ever designed… It will be cool in society to think about what kind of buildings that the society needs nowadays, and I think it’s something that brings people closer together. I think that’s very important.

Tell me about Musicmap.

Well it started off because I wanted it. I was looking for it on the internet. I was looking for a map of music genres, a very good map of music genres because I was convinced that it already existed. So I thought that there has to be someone, somewhere who has created a good map of music genres. So I was determined to find it, and then I looked for almost a year everywhere on the internet, even other search engines than Google. And yeah, of course I found a lot of stuff but it was not satisfactory. It was not really a good overview of music genres. I really wanted a very good overview which I felt was correct. There were many maps that I knew: these are not that good. So I started operating it myself to see how far can I go, because when I saw some of the maps which were mediocre in popularity, then I thought: I can do this better. So it was a kind of a challenge and I wanted to accept the challenge for myself to just see if I could make a better map. At the beginning, it was really, really casual. I did it like a very slow hobby. Just because I was on many different other projects and then slowly, as the years passed, I started having this map which was basically like the rough blueprint to what it is now. And then I checked more sources and I started treating it more like a PhD. [...]I think the best thing to learn in an architecture school is how to cope with stress.

Then it very slowly became more and more detailed, and then my brother said, we should make a website of it, which of course was a very logical idea. I already had the idea of making a website but I thought it would be impossible to program it, to make it very user-friendly, but he convinced me otherwise and then we started making the website. So he did the code and I did everything else.

When the idea of the website came like three years ago, something like that, then I really started working on it—especially the last two years, it was like a second job... So I realized if I wanted to make a website, it has to be very good and it has to be nuanced and well-documented and so yeah, I had to sort of write a book about it, about all these genres.

What skills from architecture school might have influenced or helped the Musicmap project?

Graphic design is the first thing that comes to mind because when you have to do your portfolio, when you have to deliver in your projects, then of course they have to be well-designed… I already had experience with professional graphic programs. Also I think the best thing to learn in an architecture school is how to cope with stress.The big challenge now is making sure that it becomes like a community thing, and bigger than something static.

And of course architects, they have to manage very large multiyear projects all the time. Almost every project, even a small house, takes more than a year, and if you have a big project, like a big building, that takes 5 to 10 years, or maybe even longer. […] Architecture school teaches patience which is really important. Also if you want to be a film director, it’s also very important to have patience. [...]

I guess there is no such thing as the ultimate map or the perfect map. You can find the ten best people in the world who know the most about music, and you can let all these ten people create a map, but they will get ten different maps. But that doesn’t mean that only one of them is correct. It’s just different interpretations of the same reality because genres, they have fluctuating boundaries. They crossover into each other, you can have the same reality of music history but with a different number of genres, or you can say oh, either I leave this genre out, or I take this one in, or I combine these genres. It’s all a matter of perspective. That’s why it’s important to also read the text, and to have a nuanced viewing to understand, is this a well-defined genre or not. Then, what does it mean and how does it relate to the other genres et cetera, et cetera. This is also very important.

Do you plan to keep updating and changing Musicmap?

Yes. We are reworking the project and trying to take it to the next level, because it’s cool now but it’s not really all the way there, and so we wanted to make it more powerful, to rewrite the code and to implement bigger databases and to see where we can get from there. And also make it more like a community website where people can post revisions, additions and to make sure that it becomes like a really good reference. […] We are also hoping that some music journalists and some more professional people will have a look at it and try to improve it, so that it becomes like a bible of music genres.

The big boom of music genres was somewhere around the 80s, 90s. It kind of ceased and now we have fewer and fewer new music genres, because technology also has not evolved that drastically as it has before. So I guess that maintaining the site and updating the number of genres, it’s not the big work. The big challenge now is making sure that it becomes like a community thing, and bigger than something static.