Victoria Meyers and her new book Shape of Sound are featured in a new post on Life.Style.Design. The Art of Living. Check out the post: http://www.lifestyledesignexperience.com/shape-of-sound/.
The post includes texts from Meyers's 2014 Shape of Sound, as well as her 2006 book, Designing with Light.
Designing with Light, Victoria Meyers architect
The piece describes Meyers as a visionary exploring sound as a medium to expand contemporary space design. Meyers has been at the forefront of using sound in hMa projects, since 2006, with the installation of 'Sound and Light Wells' in hMa's Infinity Chapel, located near Washington Square in the Greenwich Village area of New York City.
above: Infinity Chapel, including detail of hMa's Sound and Light Wells
In addition to applying sound manipulation to public projects, Meyers also applies concepts related to sound design to residential design, including hMa's Downtown NYC loft project, finished in 2012.
Above: Downtown Loft by hMa: sound technologies create a sound isolated interior
Meyers' latest foray into complex architectural design incorporating sound includes hMa's DWi-P located at Battery Park City, in NYC. DWi-P features a 550-foot long glass facade with embedded blue-tooth technology to support visitors reading the facade using cell phones. The facade is imprinted with a sound-score by NYC Composer Michael J. Schumacher, who is also the Founder and Executive Director of Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn.
Above: Digital Water i-Pavilion, hMa: Architecture of Movement; Sound Urbanism
DWi-P is a new Community Center at Battery Park City designed to welcome visitors from the World Trade Center Memorial Site to the parks at Battery Park City. The building, which houses a series of pools to support the swimming programs of Asphalt Green, has a composition embedded in the facade titled: WaTER.
Meyers recently presented hMa's works at FIU (Florida International University) in Miami, where she was hosted by Professor David Rifkind. Meyers's lecture, titled SEMPER (system, energy, materiality, program, education, research) reviewed hMa's works, including the founding principals' (Meyers and Hanrahan) dedication to education as part of their approach to design, architecture, landscapes, and master plans.
Ryoan-ji Temple + Stasis; hMa's Pratt Pavilion + Dynamic Space
Above: hMa projects contrast Dynamic and Static Formal approaches to design
Above: hMa's Infinity Chapel, designed for Tenth Church of Christ, Scientist, in NYC:
Using Sound + Light Wells to direct human movement from Street/ to Chapel/ to Garden
above: hMa's Won Buddhist Retreat: Spiral forms direct walking meditation through Nature
Meyers studio at UTA (University of Texas Arlington): MWEE: a new subway stop for the #1 train in NYC at 125th Street
Meyers hMa Research includes Bluetooth embedded glass, and an App to give access to sound compositions embedded in a building facade at Battery Park City
Both projects are high-end residential. Dune house, at the top, is for a family of five in Amagansett, NY. Downtown Loft is a high-end residential loft for a couple in NYC.
Dune House was developed to be built with state-of-the-artgreen technologies, to allow the house to be constructed within a fragile dune reserve area. The base of the house is an existing building, and all water use, electrical, and materials are state of the art green, to give the house a less than zero-carbon-footprint. The builder for the house has agreed to use best practices to protect all native species on the site. The Owners have also hired a Landscape Architect to remove all non-native invasive species, and replace them with native plant species.
Dune House is a courtyard design, with the house and out-building arranged around a new, free-form pool, with glass sides. It is possible to look into the pool from the East and South elevations.
Both projects feature extensive woodwork, including cabinetry inserts by hMa collaborator, Miya Shoji, located in NYC.
Victoria Meyers architect, hanrahan Meyers architects, presents shade, shadow and form, related to the firm's works at Won Buddhist Retreat, DWi-P, and the works of Iannis Xenakis.
Above: Porch at Won Buddhist Retreat, hMa, 2014: Cedar Screen design based on variable spacing - to reflect the wooded condition of the site: Infinite Bleed of Edge
Above: La Tourette Windows : Window Patterning based on Iannis Xenakis sound composition, and geometric ideas formulated in the Modulor, with Le Corbusier. These forms were later transcribed into sound by Xenakis in his composition, Metastasis.
DWi-P by hMa, hanrahan Meyers architects. A frameless glass facade, where a frit pattern is generated by a sound score by New York composer Michael J. Schumacher: WaTER. To hear WaTER, visit the hMa website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.
Above: Water, by Karen Gunderson.
Meyers explores themes linking Water, lines, form, shadow, and light in her new book, Shape of Sound available here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=victoria%20meyers%20shape%20of%20sound
Credit for much the contents of this lecture goes to the insightful writing of Martin E. Rosenberg - an Independent Scholar, living in Pittsburgh, Pa.. I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in the contents of this blog post, go to Martin E. Rosenberg's posting on Inflexions: www.inflexions.org/n4_rosenbergthml.html.
For session 5, we look at the works of Xenakis and Le Corbusier, and contemporary influences on their works. This would include the incredibly rapid changes that occurred both socially technologically, fueled by World Wars I and II.
The music of that time reflected many of these changes, especially Jazz, and the work of artists such as Thelonious Monk. Martin Rosenberg relates many of these changes not only to technologies of mass production demanded by the wars, but also to concepts of 'complexity and emergence' in physics and cognitive science.
Le Corbusier and his atelier, including the amazing Iannis Xenakis, could not help but be strongly influenced by these changes. This would include Le Corbusier's direct reference to factory produced cars such as the Citroen (Maison Citrohan).
The fascination with the machine is also reflected around the same time, in the sound works of Pierre Schaeffer, who invented the idea of 'Musique Concrete'.
In addition to changes in architectural design related to industrial practices, Le Corbusier and Xenakis spent a great deal of time trying to solve issues related to climate in their buildings. Thus Le Corbusier's fascination with the development of new ideas about windows and window design (the brise-soleil; the aerator; the vision area of the glass). This compares to today's practitioners who are focusing on the development of several new ways of conditioning space, with hvac technologies asserting strong influence on the language of architectural design.
Le Corbusier and Xenakis study the 'climatic grid', above, at the Villa Shodhan in India, above.
Rensellaer Polytechnic's CASE (Center for Architecture Science and Ecology, above.
Scientific advances, in turn, have affected sound, and composer's interpretations of sound and music. In 1967 composer Istvan Anhalt composed the 'Symphony of Modules'. In 2008, architect Steven Holl used Anhalt's base composition as the determining geometry for a new house in Seoul, South Korea.
Again, we return to the original piece that I referenced by Martin Rosenberg. Rosenberg also references the composer John Cage's decision to foreground the interdepences between music and noise in a careful considered deconstruction of the calculus of music notation in the 20th century.
These formal overlaps and references that connect music, architecture, and culture in the 1950's are the subject of lecture 5, for architect Victoria Meyers' seminar: Sound Urbanism/ Sound Ecology.
A house in nature should recognize and respect the presence of that landscape.A retreat in nature should allow the silence of the forest to enter into the domestic realm.The choice of site is the most important decision for placing a house within any landscape.
A house should incorporate the materials of nature:
There is a fundamental relationship between the perception of sculpture and the presence of the human body.Sculptors think with their bodies and sense their presence in the world.The world-space is the raw material in which the sculptor inscribes the human presence.
The minimalists and the process artists have tempered our views of what defines sculpture.Their emphatic use of unaccustomed spaces such as floors, ceilings, fields, and even water and volcanoes (in the case of Turrell) has brought the surveyor’s view of the world into the art of sculpture.
Landscape
Land has so much potential
The scale of American nature was grander than anything that the Europeans who settled it had ever experienced.A house in nature should recognize and respect the presence of that landscape.A retreat in nature should allow the silence of the forest to enter into the domestic realm.The choice of site is the most important decision for placing a house within such a landscape:interior space can acknowledge and enhance one’s sense of the landscape without.
Plumb Run:Equal Elevations
Richard Serra, 1983
hMa's practice is based on the fundamentals of architecture:light, space, and materials.In 2002 we published a monograph of our work:the four states of architecture, a bookdivided into four sections that address this approach to the fundamentals of architecture:horizon, light, atmospheres, and ground.The four states of architecture is a reference to our attempt to weave interpretations of the natural world through our projects.Our projects range in scale from individual residences to buildings for institutional clients, galleries, and performing arts.In 2006 designing with light was published by Laurence King, documenting Victoria Meyers and hMa’s research into light.Designing with light was the first in a series of books mapping Victoria’s research into natural phenomena.Future publications include shape of sound (Spring 2014); and atmospheres.
In 2006 we completed Holley House in Garrison, New York.Holley House rests on two stone landscape walls that grow out of the ground plane.The two walls define an interior space.To either side of this ‘three-dimensional wall’, pavilions project into the landscape. The house is designed as an atmosphere of nature:an ancient stone wall in the landscape becomes a centering device for dwelling.Dwelling occurs in wall-less pavilions that project out from this central wall.
We build houses that connect people with natural phenomena.
Music and Noise are where my journey into sound as an element of architecture began. I ended my investigations with ideas about silence. Silence is to sound as white light is to color: the tabula rasa.
Tabula rasa literally translated means blank tablet, or, more accurately, scraped tablet. It refers to the Roman tabula, or wax tablet, used for notes, blanked by heating the wax, and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.
Tabula rasa describes a baseline moment in time. Birth and Death are ‘tabula rasa’ events of one’s life. These are moments when our ‘tablets’ are literally scraped clean, and an opening is created for new beginnings. Whereas the idea of ‘scraping clean’ can be destructive, it also marks a line that allows for a healthy renewal.
In 1952 the composer John Cage performed 4’ – 33”. If you do not know this piece, 4’ – 33” has performers sitting in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, and that period of ‘silence’ comprises Cage’s piece. Since its original presentation in 1952, 4’ – 33” creates an open interpretation of music, sound, and noise. Cage’s piece proposes that sounds surrounding a performance are equal to any musical composition.
Silence sets the idea of ‘sound’ apart as a concept. If silence is zero, then noise is an arbitrary flow of numeration, without form, arrangement, and without an ending point. Music, on the other hand, is an organized arrangement of sounds that take us from zero to some ending point, as selected and curated, by the composer. This distinctive description of these ideas is made possible, through the existence of Cage’s piece.
For the past twenty years, I have crafted an architectural and urban design practice (hanrahan Meyers architects) that includes sound as a formal element of the designed environment. Music is the art of sound, and architecture is the art of building. Shape of Sound is an attempt to catalogue the cross-fertilization between sound and architecture, and how these two disciplines unite to generate a unique hybrid practice.
I began using sound as part of my architectural practice in 1995, when I developed a concept for a museum installation titled Sampling. Sampling was proposed to the San Francisco Museum of Art, and included works by sound artistsStephen Vitiello and DJ Olive; visual artists Bruce Pearson and Roxy Paine; and works from hMa, my architectural practice. Contemporary art, architecture, and sound are deeply concerned with sampling and samples. Contemporary architects, visual artists, and sound artists use ‘samples’ as operative tools to create post-modern representations of contemporary culture.
Above: 'contains real hard won insight': Victoria Meyers with Bruce Pearson.
Contributors to the book:
Since 2002 I have collaborated with the composer and sound artist Michael Schumacher (www.michaeljschumacher.com). You can see Michael’s work if you look at the cover of this book. My firm, hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) commissioned Michael to develop a score for our building, DWi-P (Digital Water i-Pavilion), and we etched Michael’s score for his composition (WaTER) onto the building’s glass façade. You can hear Michael’s score through the DWi-P App, or by visiting the SoS web page: www.shapeofsound.us.
Sound is a mechanical wave that translates from our ears to our brains as sound. It may seem curious that someone who works in the highly visual media of architecture and urban design would develop a body of work that uses sound - an invisible energy wave - as a focal point. When architectural form is used to frame a phenomenon, and renders it, in this case, sound, ‘visible’: a visceral link is created between the spaces that we occupy, and our experience of the world.
I met Stephen Vitiello, whose piece, ‘A Bell for Every Minute’, animated the High Line project in New York City, when Stephen and I worked on the ‘Sampling’ show. We have continued our dialogue about the effects of sound in the environment ever since. You can see Stephen’s work, which is critical to this book, in the chapters on Sound Urbanism (pages 80 – 81), and Sound Art (pages 117 – 123).
hMa also collaborated with sound artist Jane Philbrick on an architectural and sound installation for Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York. Vox Harbour was a spoken word installation in a waterfront park that included the construction of three ‘listening and speaking’ stations. The stations were wood shells designed by hMa to capture sound within naturalistic, bio-morphically shaped ‘talking’ booths. The booths were designed for users to stand in and speak (single users). Words were recorded and overlaid by words spoken by prior participants. The concept was to capture multiple recordings representing the broad cultural heritage of Queens.
Shape of Sound and Designing with Light: a series connection
Prior to Shape of Sound, I published Designing with Light in 2006. DwL included research on light by Dr. Lene Hau, from Harvard’s Physics Department; sound works by composers Arvo Part and John Cage; videos by artist Bill Viola; and light art by Dan Flavin. All of these practitioners had developed artistic and scientific works that were, on the one hand, relevant to their particular media, but also, at the same time, addressed to the issue of how light affects space.
Shape of Sound was planned to follow the methods of inquiry set forth by DwL. Architecture is an art where all of the senses are engaged. SoS is a book that looks at sound as an objective, formal element of design, using methods of critique and investigation, similar to the critical methods used to study light in DwL.
Perception and Sound Waves
Our perception of the sounds that we hear changes over time, and is directly related to the contemporary technologies of any given place and/or time. The sound of a Medieval village was very different from the sound of a town with factories during the industrial era. Our contemporary sound perception of the city is highly displaced through the on-going dialogue that smart phone users hear through their headsets.
The sound of the city today is more of a hum than the grinding of factories from the industrial age, but we also have cars everywhere, and airplanes overhead. There are a lot of sounds, in addition to the sounds of nature. SoS is an attempt to isolate and critically evaluate many of those sounds, and make them a conscious part of the design discussion about the city and the building.
Contemporary experience of Sound
Our contemporary sense of sound is conditioned by digital technologies. The generation coming of age grew up listening to the world through headphones. This generation hears the world differently than prior generations, and part of what this book looks at is this very difference. hMa explores that difference in particular in our recently completed DWi-P project (Digital Water i-Pavilion) at Battery Park City.
Walls are a traditional element of the language of architecture. Columns and walls are the basic language of architecture taught in the first year of architectural design studies. Our perception of walls changes radically, however, if they become ‘green screens’ for the projection of imagery and sound. This book begins to touch on recent digital innovations, as we move toward intelligent walls that respond to human interactions assisted through biologic and electronic sensory systems. The emergence of intelligent systems, manifest in interactive electronic and biological interfaces that interact with building users, is changing the experience of our physical environment.
The object of our interaction with the built environment is no longer the materiality of walls and surfaces. The critical focus of architecture and urban design is becoming the continuous and interactive surface of web-based information.
Iannis Xenakis, Le Corbusier, and the Phillips Pavilion : Precursors of where we are today
The work of structural engineer and composer Iannis Xenakis, composer Edgar Varese, and architect Le Corbusier at the Phillips Pavilion has been a strong influence on contemporary design. As architecture faces the rapidity of contemporary technological advancements, I would reference readers to the Phillips Pavilion, which was, in its day, a prescient and futuristic example of the sort of interactive wall surfaces that we are beginning to see constructed in public spaces today.
Singularity
We face a singular moment in history. Architecture is searching for new points of reference as a response to the disintegration of its material form through the sensory experiences of the Internet and digital media. My idea with Shape of Sound was to explore this edge, and to comment on where we stand today, with respect to these various and differential forms of media and knowledge as they interact with and alter our perception of the physical world.
hMa, Victoria Meyers architect, are known for their senstivity to landscape and site. This attention to site and landscape is evident in the images of the firm's Upstate New York residence, above. The house is sited on twentry-five acres in Garrison, New York.
hMa used a combinatio of wood and stone to create the reading of the house. In this case, the wood, a light-colored exterior ash siding, took on a similar coloration to the cut limestone used in two 65-foot long landscape walls that were used as major generative elements of the house design
hMa cut holes in the roof at various locations, to create framed views of sky. The house also has a relationship to water: in the pool beyond the stone landscape wall in the photo, above. And in the architectural promenade through the house to the lake, to the west.
The house was designed with openings that frame views of the house, in this case, the view from the porte cochere of the garage, toward the main living room space. The entry porch in the foreground.
Projects that were reviewed with the client during the design process include Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. Above: custom screens were built, and create scrim views toward the landscape. View west, overlooking the pond.
Above: Landscape frames a living room, looking north. The house sits surrounded by old growth trees. Water to the north, and to to the west. Stone, water, wood, wind and light.
View looking east toward the living room, up the hill, with the pond, behind the person taking this shot. The pond is approximately forty feet below this location in the landscape.
View looking east, living room pavilion in foreground; master bedroom wing visible above the limestone wall, to the east, above. precision cuts in the formal rendering of the house frame views from one wing to the other.
Victoria Meyers: Designing With Light
New York Architects Victoria Meyers and Thomas Hanrahan believe that architecture is an environment, 'pure space', manifested in nature. The principals of hanrahanMeyers architects (hMa) have established themselves as unique visionaries, incorporating light and sound into their arresting designs of pure forms. Founded in 1987, the firm specializes in residences, art centers, and community spaces. They design spaces from a vision that connects visitors with the natural world.
www.designingwithlight.us
Victoria Meyers: Shape of Sound Architect Victoria Meyers analyzes the shape of sound; architecture and sound; form; materiality; windows; the urban sound scape, its politics, aesthetics and social character; reflection; virtuality; sound art; and silence.
Shape of Sound on Amazon
Victoria Meyers: Shape of Sound Victoria Meyers architect (Los Angeles, Ca.), principal of hanrahan Meyers architects (hMa) explores sound as it effects architecture, urban spaces, and landscapes. Contributors include hanrahan Meyers architects (featured on the book cover), Stephen Vitiello, Michael J. Schumacher, David Mather, Neil Denari, Bruce Pearson, Howeler and Yoon architecture, and Joseph Ketner.
hMa : Green Initiatives / Sustainable Architecture
United Nations Environment Programme "Environmental Knowledge for Change" this site is an incredible resource on environmental and social issues around the world
Greenopia NY hMa is proud to be featured as a "Greenopia Distinguished Business"
41 Pounds A campaign to stop junk mail (named for the number of pounds of junk mail the average American adult recieves in 1 year!)
The Conservation Fund As part of our nature based vision for architecture, hMa gives a percentage of the firm’s annual revenues to nature initiatives. This year, hMa funded ‘Wildlife Corridors’, through the Conservation Fund. ‘Wildlife Corridors’ provide natural zones through cities and towns that link animals with adjacent nature preserves. This initiative is one of several cutting-edge planning initiatives that forward thinking architects will be adopting as we seek to harmonize human habitats with nature and create sustainable development.
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