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Music and Architecture: Philips Pavilion, Iannis Xenakis 1958

Thesis · December 2014

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.32167.96165

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 Music and Architecture: Philips Pavilion, Iannis Xenakis 1958

Bachelor Thesis, Anyla Berisha

University for Business and Technology, Faculty of Architecture
November 2014, Prishtine, Kosovo

Abstract

On the recorded conversations with the composer David Rosenboom (1947) on Mills College in
Oakland, California, Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) explains that during the studies of music
attentions, a number of mechanisms lead our attention toward a particular image or experience.
In other words, when we need to remember a musical piece, firstly we remember the image
associate with this piece, so it doesn’t function alone, but it is connected to memories,
photographs, experiences or even architectonic images. Through a brief historic review from pre-
historic to modern times, this research aims to give a proper understanding of connection
between music and architecture which as we will see later on, existed since the pre-historic times,
very often without even noticing. The “translation” of rhythmic partition, the possibility of creating
music from mathematic, which architecture suits the most different musical styles, where It ends
and when the other begins, how Architecture is initiated having the music as inspiration, how
music stars from a strongly emotional experience that architecture can offer, this study thesis
intends to make a brief chronological parallelism of the two fields through history, before stopping
at the objective of study: Philips Pavilion and its parameters of space construction using sound as
a key element toward space experience and architectural evocation. From Le Corbusier’s organic
shaped floor plans this structure “flows’ to the facade, roof, floor creating a continual hyperbolic
parabolic, designed until the slightest details by Iannis Xenakis, inspired by his very own
composition called “Metastasis” (1954). Audio Projections, acoustic experimentations under the
sounds of Edgar Varèse's “Poème Électronique” will lead the visitors into strangely new experience
new and visionary for the time. Philips Pavilions opens the doors for the rise of electronic music
and acoustic engineering but above all, it witness the connection between Music and Architecture.
How this connection has started, how It developed through times, what sort of sensations does It
evoke are the questions to be discussed further on.

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