Transcendental Prototypes

affective design architecture music Prototypes videography

-- Finding Synchrony in Spatial Melodies

undergraduate thesis

To experience music is to explore what is means to be human. A prototype inspired and complemented by the creation of a musical piece, is to be presented for the redesign of banal, everyday spaces. It creates a new world on the foundation of space-making through affect, which aims to challenge the desensitized and dehumanized spaces we have been inhabiting with transcendental, musical spaces. To open wide our eyes, is to engage all senses and put our assumptions under a fresh lens.

Music has an inherent transcendental quality that connects to our ability to express or to perceive. We inhabit spaces every day, yet music provides escape to another, more transcendent, space. People, particularly in urban landscapes, are under the imminent and ubiquitous emotional damage caused by dehumanized, desensitized spaces in the modern era, which forces us and those in a position of comfort to rethink the aesthetics of architecture, and to infuse affectual experiences into the banal, everyday spaces.

Musical composition and architectural design have many similarities. From the conception of the project upon a site and context, to the choice of texture and form, and the realization of the creation in the form of a performance or construction. Both work with creating affect and must place the human body at the center of reception. Borrowing and adapting techniques and thinking process of musical composition, a prototypical design process is proposed. It creates a new world on the foundation of space-making through affect.

In this world, architecture is not to be anesthetic, but synchronizing the body with the melodies of the space. Architecture must open wide our eyes, to engage all senses and put our assumptions of good design under a fresh lens. This experimental model is a risk unto itself, but the goal is to ultimately create healthier and more synchronous spaces.