‘On Vibrational Architectures’ (2024)

GASCIA OUZOUNIAN (text) AND JAN ST. WERNER (images)

Published in The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space, co-edited by Emma-Kate Matthews, Jane Burry, and Mark Burry.

This chapter develops the concept of vibrational architecture: architecture whose acoustic are highlighted and extended (not reduced); and architectural and spatial practices that privilege vibrational phenomena, including the material transmission of audible and inaudible sound. The concept of vibrational architecture is explored in connection to the work of theorists including Steve Goodman and Jonathan Tyrrell, and practitioners including Katarzyna Krakowiak, Maryanne Amacher, Mark Bain, Mendi + Keith Obadike, and Jan St. Werner. Their work shows how seemingly distinct architectures are intertwined through the common realm of vibration (Krakowiak); asks how the material transmission of sound can extend the expressive capacities of sound and music (Amacher); puts into motion ‘vibrational ecologies’ – networks of energetic transference and transduction (Bain); uses sound to engage not only the physical properties of architectural materials but also their politics and histories (Obadikes); and seeks ‘an understanding of solid structures as porous and borders as transitional’ (St. Werner). A vibrational architecture challenges the perceived stability and fixity of architectural forms and structures; and it calls for architecture studies to consider not only what was built and what remains, but also what has passed through: those transient and ephemeral energies that have been absorbed, transmitted, transduced, and reflected by architecture.