The Place of Silence: Architecture / Media / Philosophy

Description

The Place of Silence explores the poetics and politics of silence in architecture. Bringing together contributions by internationally recognized scholars in architecture and the humanities, it explores the diverse practices, affects, politics and cultural meanings of silence, silent places and silent buildings in historical and contemporary contexts. What counts as silence in specific situations is highly relative, and the term itself carries complex and varied significations which make it a revealing field of study. Chapters explore a range of themes, from the apparent ‘loss of silence’ in the contemporary urban world; through designed silent spaces; to the forced silences of oppression, catastrophe, or technological breakdown. The book unfolds a rich and complementary array of perspectives which address – through the lens of architecture and place – questions of sound, atmosphere, and attunement, together building a volume which will form the key scholarly resource on architecture and silence. Cover page Halftitle page Title page Copyright Contents Illustrations List of contributors An introduction to silence PART ONE Mediating silence 1 ‘Then there was war’: John Hejduk’s Silent Witnesses as nuclear criticism Mark Dorrian 2 Textures of silence in Claire Denis’s Beau Travail (1999) Hannah Paveck Framing silence through Nancean listening Tonal silence: Aural texture within film sound Listening to tonal silence in Beau Travail The ethics of listening: Towards a postcolonial critique 3 Listening to Visaginas: On the rescaling of silences and sounds in a former Soviet nuclear town Benjamin Cope 4 Urban silence and informational noise: A study of Athens’s invisible structures Aikaterini Antonopoulou Media noise Urban silence Informational noise From emptiness to a place of sonorized appearances 5 The silent present: The contemporary atmosphere of architectural historiography Amy Kulper Cacophony Deafening silence Broken silence Reduced to silence No time like the present The silent present PART TWO Material silences 6 Between the lines Manuela Antoniu Kintsugi – ceramic Kintsugi – mental Kintsugi – architectural Silentio conclusit? 7 The silence of Michelangelo’s hammer Jonathan Foote 8 Making silence: Modes of emptiness in Iberian art and architecture Ross Jenner Stereotomy Solid and/or void? Oscillation Clearing-away Affects 9 On becoming petrified: The erotic gaze in architectural conception Carolina Dayer Stupefied bodies Erotic drawings The embodied gaze PART THREE Practising silence 10 Silence, paradox and religious topography Christos Kakalis Polarities and the spatiality of silence 11 Silences generating space A. -Chr. Engels-Schwarzpaul and Carl Mika Introduction The co-constitution of silence Materiality of silence Practising silence: Protocols of encounter Conclusion: Sharing a common state 12 Silence in the middle ground: Aesthetic immersion in the geologic Tiago Torres-Campos Introduction Environmental anxieties through dwelling and domesticity Rhizomatic writing machines: A burrow, a church Geologic impressions of a fossilized city The geologic and the agency of plastic Conclusion 13 John Hejduk and Samuel Beckett: Going on, in silence and lateness Jason O’Shaughnessy Beckett’s imminent silences Hejduk’s Berlin presences PART FOUR Silence and the senses 14 Quiet places – silent space: Towards a phenomenology of silence Gernot Böhme Preliminary remarks on terminology The quiet place The calm of death Architecture of silence Phenomenology of silence 15 Silence please! A brief history of silence at the theatre Louise Pelletier 16 Vessels of place: Auditory landscapes, cross- cultural echoes insouth- west Victoria Paul Carter 17 Attunement and silence Alberto Pérez-Gómez Notes Index