Archinect - News

A California musician is playing with the Golden Gate Bridge for an unlikely duet

2021-08-11T19:06:00-04:00

You might've heard of the concept of a "bridge" in music. Well, guitarist Nate Mercereau is taking that term literally. In July, he released a new album in collaboration with San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — yes, you read that right — titled Duets / Golden Gate Bridge, which features droning guitar improvisations over the eerie hum of the Bay Area landmark.

The Bay Area icon is known to have a humming effect resulting from a retrofit that added new slats to the bridge's handrails. Mercereau read about the effect in a San Francisco Chronicle article last year before recruiting an audio engineer and photographer to follow him into the Marin Headlands for an impromptu studio session.

Other "singing bridges" can be found in states like Kentucky and Michigan, though none are likely as big as the Golden Gate. New York City's Verrazzano Bridge has its moments as well.

GuitarWorld has more on the musical side of the 88-year-old suspension bridge. You can check out a video of Mercereau's performance below.

Acoustic architecture and the geometry of "focalizers"

2017-11-30T12:41:00-05:00

Entering into a new space means stepping into a new acoustic arena. Whether subconscious or at the forefront of our attention, the way sound resonates in a built environment is part of a crafted experience influencing how people relate to a space. The presence of a circle or semi circle in architecture produces a specific phenomena which many encounter in passing. When an individual passes through the exact center of a dome their own voice is reflected back to them louder than any other sound in the present environment.

Classified by some as “focalizers”, these instances occur predominantly in cathedrals or capital domes. Where some may simply pass through, others seek out this center point to experience their own private arena of sound. The acoustical reflection is immediate, clear, and amplified above any other surrounding noise.

Whispering Gallery in Grand Central Terminal.

A related phenomenon is the "whispering wall", which occurs along a curved surface carrying even the slig...

Have you listened to your building?

2016-01-20T14:46:00-05:00

Derek Sugden, the dean of acoustic engineers, who has died at the age of 91, remained perpetually surprised that architects could be so concerned with every aspect of the building they were designing ‘but not really with what it sounded like’. According to Sugden, ‘the sound is as important as the surface and the feel. It’s important because our ears define for me the nature of space.’

So not everyone can be Yasuhisa Toyota, but still: paying attention to the acoustics of a space should be a vital component of the architectural design process, yeah?

Related:

Create sonic architecture with mesh, music, and lights at the New Museum this weekend

2015-08-06T14:50:00-04:00

Museum displays are typically meant to be seen and not touched, but a recent wave of exhibitions is upending those rules. Take DELQA, an interactive music and light installation opening in the New Museum's NEW INC space on August 6. Showcasing the music of Matthew Dear combined with Microsoft's Kinect technology, the project allows participants to touch, push and poke suspended mesh walls to manipulate a musical composition, creating their own unique experience of the space.

If you're on the hunt for weekend plans in NYC, DELQA will be at the New Museum only from August 6-9!

Parametrizing the sound of the street - SONAR installation

2014-07-28T12:08:00-04:00

The SONAR installation was conceived and built during the 1st Parametric Design Workshop at Universidade Católica de Pernambuco (UNICAP), Brazil. Applying Grasshopper and Rhinoceros as key design tools, the idea was to capture the lively relationships that take place on the main integration axis in the Campus to where social gatherings, daily conversations and meals converge, bringing these into the Architecture School building, a typical modernist structure punctuated by long boring corridors.

Parametrizing the sound of the street - SONAR installation

Do the sounds of the street have shape?

This installation was conceived and built during the 1st Parametric Design Workshop at Universidade Católica de Pernambuco (UNICAP), Brazil, a pioneer initiative in the State, which focused on applying Grasshopper and Rhinoceros softwares as a design tool. For six days, a group of 25 architecture students and young architects, under the guidance of professors Victor Sardenberg, Ana Luisa Rolim and Robson Canuto da Silva, gathered to discuss theoretical aspects of and practice parametric design, aiming to build temporary low-budget installations at UNICAP campus. The Sonar was one of these installations.

As opposed to typical campuses in Brazil, mostly designed under modern architecture principles that reproduced the garden city model, privileging the maximization of open spaces, the campus at UNICAP occupies traditional urban blocks in the heart of the city of Recife - a major capital in ...