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Music

Orproject Turns Music into Architecture

An international architecture firm is bringing music into the physical space—by making it the physical space.

Following in the footsteps of legendary architect and composer Iannis Xenakis, the experimental architecture firm Orproject, led by director and founding member Christoph Klemmt, is bringing music and architecture to an interesting zenith. Klemmt’s design for the Busan Opera House in South Korea, entitled Anisotropia, is a direct physical representation of a musical composition he created for the piano. Anisotropia, slated for construction in 2014, is basically music, frozen in physical space.

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Of the structure, Orproject writes, "The design is based on a simple strip morphology instead of a twelve tone row, which creates the facade, structure and rhythm within itself, its repetition happening in space instead of time. Layers of the strips form the façade structure, and the shifting and alteration of these patterns results in the formation of complex architectural rhythms used to control the light, view and shading properties of the façade."

Anisotropia’s atrium, from the inside.

The structure builds around the 12 tones used in Klemmt's original piece, entitled Klavierstrück I, and what ensues is a growing, evolving physical soundscape that begins from the sea and culminates in an envelope of rippling waves that just scream insulating and undulating ecological foresight. The interior looks acoustically overwhelming, something of a cross between Monstro the Whale's innards and a termite's wet dream. What we're most interested in, however, and please insert rap music joke here, is the flow.

Part of Klemmt’s composition, compared to how it gets rendered physically.

According to Orproject, "The positioning of the façade walls has been developed according to a custom written flow simulation. The algorithm describes a flow that is influenced and altered by a set of deflectors, which each act according to the magnitude of their attraction and the area of their influence […] The distribution of the programmatic elements on the site is used as the deflector set that guides the flow of the rhythm lines which originate from the sea. On their way towards the city, the lines flow around the building elements such as the theatre and auditoriums, splitting up and being diverted by the deflectors." From a rap standpoint, the flow’s comparable to, say, B-Real from Cypress Hill, in that it’s white, highly complex, and heavily centered around going green.

On top of being architecture based on music, the opera house is further sculpted by a complex mathematical formula that takes into account both properties of sustainable design and the surrounding environment. So not only is Anisotropia music frozen in physical space, it’s also arguably interactive. While here’s to hoping they’ll release the algorithm at some point so all you open-sourcers can tool around with sonic sculpture, our real concern is the amount of paint it'll take to keep Busan Opera House that nice crisp white, especially on a gigantic, open body of water.