A Professor of Architecture from the University of Virginia has developed a website that allows you to listen to musical compositions of famous architectural spaces.
Professor Karen Van Lengen, in collaboration with artist James Welty and musician Troy Rogers, used ambient sound recordings taken from the sites like New York’s Grand Central Terminal or the New York Public Library to create synaesthetic animations, which they then incorporated into the Soundscape Architecture webpage for all to hear.
The makers of Soundscape say the aim of the project is to help equalize the imbalance between senses that often occurs when people experience architecture.
According to Van Lengen, architecture has always been promoted as a visual field, exacerbated these days by building sketches, drawings and photographs readily available on the internet.
Soundscape Architecture allows people to virtually walk outside and enter buildings, listening to and comparing the auditory ambience of each space via animations and diagrams that detail the shape and location of the space, the surface materials which help to create the sound, and the number of people that contribute to the atmosphere.
A screenshot of the Soundscape Architecture virtual street
A screenshot of the Guggenheim Museum sound diagram
A screenshot of the animation for The Rockefeller Center
Courtesy Arch Daily
