![Sample our Urban Studies journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110826/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Urban-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
The paper examines how and why a number of entries to the International Architectural Design Contest for the building of the Arvo Pärt Centre at Laulasmaa, Estonia, sought to transpose Pärt’s music into built – or potentially buildable – form, emphasizing the conditions of silence and stillness in it. Marginally included in the twentieth-century movement of musical minimalism and deeply influenced by Russian Christian Orthodox faith, Pärt explores the translation into music of notions like ritual repetition and silent prayer through his tintinnabuli method: the combination of triadic arpeggios with melodic lines. The comparative investigation of their further translation in the competition entries aims to explore the design possibilities of silence and stillness examined as important material conditions of the understanding of architecture and natural landscape.
Acknowledgements
I express my gratitude to the Arvo Pärt Centre (especially Ms Kai Kutman) and The Union of Estonian Architects (especially Ms Ingrid Mald-Villand) for their help in this study. The advice of Professor Peter Bouteneff (St Vladimir’s Seminary, New York) on the role of silence and spirituality in Pärt’s music has been invaluable. In addition, I thank the architectural offices that accepted my request to contribute to this work. It was supported by the Alexandros S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation (Athens, Greece).
Notes
1 International Two-stage Architectural Design Contest for the Building of the Arvo Pärt Centre. The Jury’s Report. Final Result of the Open Competition in two stages. Available online: http://www.arhliit.ee/files/APCentre_Jury_Assessment_veebi.pdf (accessed February 12, 2015), 3 (added emphasis).
2 Ibid., 4.
3 The twelve were from the offices COOP HIMMEL(B)LAU, Schneider and Schumacher, Nieto and Sobejano, Ofis Arhitekti, Kavakava OU, AZPML, Kersten Geers and David van Severen (OFFICE), Arhitektibüro Emil, Kolm Plus Uks, Claudio Silvestrin Architects, Allied Works, and Henning Larsen Architects.
4 Entries by the offices Ricky Joy, Alver Arhitektid, Jensen and Skodvin Architects, Koko Arhitektid, and Salto AB OÜ.
5 Robin Evans, Translations from Drawing to Building. AA Documents 2 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 154.
6 Ibid.
7 Explanatory Text for the Competition, courtesy of Nieto and Sobejano Arquitetos, no page numbers.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. “Spiegel im Spiegel” is one of Pärt’s characteristic compositions based on his method.
11 Explanatory Text for the Competition, courtesy of the Union of Estonian Architects and AZPML Architects, no page numbers.
12 Ibid.
13 An important idea of the proposal was to bring views of the forest into the building by using the roofs as reflectors, something that greatly affected the angle of their slope.
14 Available online: http://www.alliedworks.com/projects/arvo-part-centre/ (accessed February 12, 2015).
15 Explanatory Text for the Competition (added emphasis).
16 Ibid., 7.
17 Enzo Restagno, “Arvo Pärt in Conversation,” in Arvo Pärt in Conversation, ed. Enzo Restagno, Leopold Brauneiss, and Saale Kareda (Champaign: Dalkey Archive, 2012), 68.
18 Musical minimalism was a label given to the work of certain American composers during the late 1960s. Its most representative musicians include Philip Glass and Steve Reich. In Europe, composers such as John Tavener and Pärt are considered to be greatly influenced by the movement.
19 Andrew Shenton, The Cambridge Companion to Arvo Pärt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1.
20 Arvo Pärt, quoted in Marguerite Bostonia, “Bells as Inspiration in Tintinnabulation,” in Shenton, Cambridge Companion, 128.
21 Ibid.
22 Leopold Brauneiss, “Analyzing Pärt,” in Shenton, Cambridge Companion, 55.
23 Peter C. Bouteneff, Arvo Part: Out of Silence (New York: SVS, 2015), esp. ch. II, “Out of Silence,” 93–135.
24 Robert Sholl, “Arvo Pärt and spirituality,” in Shenton, Cambridge Companion, 140.
25 Paul Hillier, Arvo Pärt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 4–6. On Byzantine iconography, see Alexei Lidov, Hierotophy, Spatial Icons and Image-Paradigms in Byzantine Culture (Moscow: Theoria, 2009).
26 Hillier, Arvo Pärt, 6–12.
27 George Florofsky, Issues of Orthodox Theology (Athens: Artos Zois, 1973), 160–162.
28 Timothy Ware, “Introduction,” in The Art of Prayer: An Orthodox Anthology, compiled by Igumen Chariton of Valamo (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 22–26. Fr Joseph Wong, “The Jesus Prayer and Inner Stillness,” Religion. East and West, no. 10 (October 2010): 45.
29 Hillier, Arvo Pärt, 96.
30 On the idea of soundscape, its different qualities, and types, see R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape. Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World [1977] (Vermont: Destiny, 1994).
31 Juhani Pallasmaa, “Voices of Tranquility. Silence in Art and Architecture,” in Architecture’s Appeal. How Theory Informs Architectural Praxis, eds. Marc J. Neveu and Negin Djavaherian (New York: Routledge, 2015), 195–204, 197.
32 Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Silence. The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).
33 Susan Sontag, “The Aesthetics of Silence,” in Studies of Radical Will (New York: Anchor, 2002), 3–34.
34 On the spirituality of silence, see Max Picard, The World of Silence [1948], trans. Stanley Godman (Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery, 1952).
35 George Kalamaras, Reclaiming the Tacit Dimension: Symbolic Form in the Rhetoric of Silence (New York: State University of New York Press, 1994); Stephanie Kaza, “Buddhist Views on Ritual Practice. Becoming a Real Person,” Buddhist–Christian Studies 20 (Citation2000): 45–53.
36 On silence and Christianity, see Silvia Montiglio, Silence in the Land of Logos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); and Diarmaid MacCulloch, Silence. A Christian History (London: Penguin, 2013). On the role of the desert, see Zygmunt Bauman, “From Pilgrim to Tourist – or a Short History of Identity,” in Stewart Hall and Paul du Gay, Questions of Cultural Identity (London: Sage Publications, 1996). On silence and sound as a response to the sublime atmosphere of renaissance cathedrals and their liturgical inhabitation see Deborah Howard and Laura Moretti, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009).
37 Christos Kakalis, “Silence and Communal Ritual in an Athonian Coenobitic Monastery,” in Chora 7: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture, eds. Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), 163–189.
38 Gernot Böhme, “Acoustic Atmospheres. A Contribution to the Study of Ecological Aesthetics,” Soundscape: Journal of Acoustic Ecology 1, no. 1 (Citation2000): 14–18.
39 Ibid., 18.
40 “Spark: Spirit, Sound and Space: A Conversation Inspired by Arvo Pärt.” Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_1frt-zogw (accessed February 13, 2015).
41 Kaire Maimets-Volt, Mediating the “Idea of One”: Arvo Pärt’s Pre-Existing Film Music, Ph.D. dissertation, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, 2009, 105, quoted in Maeve Louise Heaney, “Can Music ‘Mirror’ God? A Theological–Hermeneutical Exploration of Music in the Light of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel,” Religions 5, no. 2 (Citation2014): 361–384, 367. On the relation between music, the soundscape, and environmental aurality, see Schafer, Soundscape, 103–119. On the challenging of visual connotations of music (and musical notation) and the significance of a more phenomenological understanding of it, see E. Joseph Smith, The Experiencing of Musical Sound (New York: Gordon & Breach, 1979), esp. 11–64.
42 Stephen Holl’s Stretto House (1989–91) and Daeyang Gallery and House (2008–12) both use musical compositions as a source of inspiration. On the possible mathematical relationship between architecture and music, see Charles Jenks, “Architecture Becomes Music,” Architectural Review (May 6, 2013) http://www.architectural-review.com/archive/viewpoints/architecture-becomes-music/8647050.article (accessed June 29, 2016); Mikesch W. Muecke and Miriam S. Zach, eds., Resonance. Essays on the Intersection of Music and Architecture (Armes: Culicidae Architectural Press, 2007). See also http://architectonicsofmusic.com/gsapp-2009 (accessed February 11, 2015).
43 Philip Kennicott, “Music Holl: A Copper Clad Pavilion in Seoul,” Dwell (April 8, 2013). Available online: http://www.dwell.com/house-tours/article/music-holl-copper-clad-pavilion-seoul#3 (accessed February 10, 2015).
44 Pallasmaa, Voices of Tranquility, 200–201.
45 John Cage, Silence. Lectures and Writings (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). See in particular his “Lecture on Something” and “Lecture on Nothing.”
46 Edward S. Casey, Earth-Mapping: Artists Reshaping Landscape (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
47 Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Angeliki Sioli, “Drawing With/In and Drawing Out: A Redefinition of Architectural Drawing through Edward S. Casey’s Meditations on Mapping,” in Exploring the Work of Edward S. Casey. Giving Voice to Place, Memory and Imagination, ed. Azucena Cruz-Pierre and Donald A. Landes (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 153–161, 157.
48 Ibid., 158.
49 Ibid., 160.
50 On notational visualizations of soundscapes (like the spectrogram), see Schafer, Soundscape, 123–132.
51 Kaia Lehari, “Mythopoetics of Stone,” in “Phenomenology and Existentialism in the Twentieth Century,” Analecta Husserliana 104 (Citation2009): 393–402.
52 Juhani Pallasmaa, Encounters. Architectural Essays (Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2005), 324–327.