Frankfurt Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Germany

Press Release – Exhibition, ‘Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement’ Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt am Main Conceived and directed by professors Ben van Berkel, Sanford Kwinter, and Johan Bettum with Luis Etchegorry. The exhibition by the Städelschule Architecture Class will take place in Galerie Wilma Tolksdorf, Frankfurt am Main, from February 8 to April 30, 2008 / Opening: Friday 08.02 at 19:00. Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement 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 attempts to make sense of the evasive interface between time and space in architecture through the logics of music and matter. It presents a speculative synthesis of the temporal and auditory with the presumed stasis of the architectural object. In this sense, the exhibition continues a tradition that in modern architectural terms revolves around the Philips Pavilion Poème Electronique, by Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis, and Edgar Varèse (1958). In comparison, Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement is a modest endeavour, but it explores the same vibrant interface that bears on our senses and to which architecture contributes more than material silence. The exhibition presents architectural forms (see attachment), 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. In turn, each singular object exists as a counterpoint to its neighbours within the swarm of models. The fourteen pieces are scaled, transformed and completed in the fifteenth piece, the visual backdrop formed by the photographic banners. In Fifteen Pieces for a Soundscape - First Movement architecture is the abstract, vibrant and material condition which contracts momentary, total and sensual experiences. It engages the broadest possible scope of input and information and channels this into clearly articulated statements that attest to the beauty and power of architectural imagination. Städelschule exhibition image + information from UNStudio 7 Feb 2008