2 Marsham Street, London - Mathew Emmett

Does the sound of a lost building reside in the space that it once inhabited? Could a sonic
record reveal both the past and present spatial voice and, if so, how or what do we hear? Can
one perceive a voice, an energetic resonance of what was, as if signalling a code for the
proportion, volume, materiality and mass of what has been there? Can this sonic record be
coloured by patterns of occupation and habits of use, textured through the grain of time?
What happens to the space once the building and its sound is removed: is a void created, or
does the surrounding sound seep into that uninhabited location, remaining as a hum or the
faintest echo? When a new mass replaces the old architectural form, do pleats of surplus
sound drape and fold around it, or does sound mutate to inhabit the recreated space? This is
the subject of a silent dialogue.

Londons number 2 Marsham Street was a fascinating building. A monolithic scheme

designed by Eric Bedford, completed in 1971 and known as the three ugly sisters, it was
demolished in 2002/03. Built for the Department of the Environment, the colossal towers and
stood over a pair of massive 2nd World War bunkers which, in turn, occupied the site of two
Victorian gasometers. The five acre site was visually imposing with its podium, rotundas and
towers. But it was the buildings sound that captured the imagination; it was the sound that
gave it a resonance deeper than anything visual.

A greater consciousness for a building can grow by literally listening to a space. By holding
an auditory mirror up to 2 Marsham Street before it was demolished, one could document the
contextual soundscape and classify the buildings aural characteristics, deciphering the
whispers and teasing apart their own distinct identities. The distant sounds of the city could
be heard entwined with fragments of private gossip, office paraphernalia and microscopic
tremors of vibrating dust. Marsham Street is situated in one of the richest audio environments
of Westminster: the Thames, Big Ben, wind and rain, traffic, people, the white noise of the
city and even the hum of the Underground. Often the geography of the site meant one could
not see the source of the noise, the physical bodies dislocated from their voices; the
infrastructure of the city were not always visibly present, but the imprint of their sounds was
unarguably there. The sounds echoed and morphed into their own distinct language, coloured
by the presence of the buildings bulk. Atmospheric conditions and time played their part.

Historical maps, archived plans and mechanical/electrical drawings reveal a fascinating

lineage of successive histories for 2 Marsham Street and highlight the strategic importance of
the sites role in the industrialisation of London. The plans document a syncopation of
successive designs centralised around the manufacture and storage of the citys heat, light
and power. Historic routes linked by coal runs linked the site to the Thames, where barges
docked at wharves before shedding their loads for the manufacture of gas. The two massive
rotundas emphasised this memory. Maps identified the past, by showing the patterns of
occupation, industry and manufacture. Acoustically, the place was ripe for microphonic
exploration, to be plumbed like an archaeologists trench to reveal the layers of accumulated
sound. Here was the method: to record the soundscape every hour over a single day, to grid
and plot the site into a temporal field, transforming sound into magnetic code as the space
was traversed.

The soundscape was made of a diverse texture. The twenty-four hour recordings revealed the
buildings presence and how, throughout the day, the richness and diversity of the citys
noise threatened to obliterate and overwhelm the sound of the building itself - the buildings
sonic shape. After 2am, the buildings sonic imprint becomes most apparent, in spite of its
vacated state; its aural presence becomes more real as materials rub against material, slowly
decaying and oxidising. Its hulking mass had a silent presence one could hear and track and
record.

The sound of a building portrays its volume, mass, materiality, function and design - its
presence. It captures sound and reflects it, absorbs it, emits it. A building changes the sound
of a place and that low-level resonance lodges itself in memory and in the fabric of the site.
With more sensitive equipment can we hear the history of our buildings, the imprint of the
past? The sound of a place never becomes extinct - it is absorbed by new structures, new
memories. It metamorphoses.

Mathew Emmett is a [job title, eg seniot lecturer] in the architecture school of the University
of Plymouth [or whatever].

BOX
Mathew Emmett created a three dimensional sonic map of 2 Marsham Street by locating
the building within a grid and recording it at ground level with a microphone. Once the

recordings had been made, the sounds were played through speakers on which were
positioned graph papers onto which were set coloured markers. As the sounds played, the
vibration of the speakers, which varied according to the strength and pitch of the sound,
caused the markers to move. Photographs were taken of this ensemble at one second
intervals, capturing the intensity of vibration. Through these photographs, the trajectories of
the markers were tracked and drawings could be made linking line with time into a
sonographic drawing. Twenty four drawings represent each hour of the day, each of which
describes the properties of the sonic space of 2 Marsham Street in an attempt to make this
sonic presence more comprehensible.

These specific features can be compared and classified, transcribing a dynamic perception
into a system of codes and charts, says Emmett. The drawings appear spatial as intensity of
noise is plotted against time. The tonal qualities of the lines ascend, grow dense and fade.
Oblique marks juxtapose a melody of repeated lines as the sounds are given a physical
description. The drawings over the 24 hours vary considerably.

ENDS