Exhibition - Wilma Tolksdorf Gallery

Conceived and directed by professors Ben van Berkel, Sanford Kwinter, and Johan Bettum with Luis Etchegorry the exhibition by the Städelschule Architecture Class is an architectural installation comprising a swarm of fourteen objects hovering in space in front of a wall-mounted photographic tableaux. These fifteen pieces are the result of geometrical experiments and investigations of 20th century music undertaken by the Architectural Class during the last six months.

Providing the theoretical and speculative basis for the work, Sanford Kwinter has fed Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement with an architectural excursion into 20th century music. The resulting investigations have included encounters with work spanning from the experiments and recordings of Glenn Gould, via compositions of the late Karlheinz Stockhausen, to the varied work of Brian Eno. Kwinter’s input has furnished a rich tableaux of organisational and formal principles as well as a sensory backdrop for the production of the architectural objects in the exhibition.

The exhibition presents architectural forms, at once sensuous and daring, that have been produced by students in the Architectural Class. The fourteen objects are presented as floating, effervescent singularities within a space conceived as a whole, embracing and silent soundscape. This soundscape depends on the single architectural objects within it for its articulation and completion. Thus, the total space is punctuated by fourteen singular movements, deriving their respective logic from the duality of sound/music and matter.