Bartlett Research Conversations: Jonathan Tyrrell

Architecture's Acoustic Shadow: Unsettling the Sound-Space Relationship

Speaker: Jonathan Tyrrell
Supervisors: Prof. Penelope Haralambidou and Dr. Nina Vollenbroker 
Guest panellist: Prof. Gascia Ouzounian from the University of Oxford

Abstract

The acoustic signature of an architectural space conveys complex information about its geometry, materiality, tectonics, and occupation. Thus, hearing is often considered a quintessentially spatial sense. However, a Vitruvian emphasis on reverberation has overlooked how sound operates transversally, moving through bodies and matter, undermining spatial division, and confounding architectural legibility. Furthermore, within architectural discourse on sound there exists a strong ableist bias, assuming a universal listening subject. This research draws on deaf studies, sound studies, and new materialism - as conceptual and ethical frameworks at three sites of sonic encounter: matter, the body, and the expanded field. It combines practice-based methods (self-resonating instruments, field recordings, performative writing, and drawings) with historical research and speculative design. By attending to how different bodies, and even how different materials listen to space, the focus shifts away from sound as a phenomenon of study toward sound as a critical method for interrogating the built environment.

About The Bartlett Research Conversations

The Bartlett School of Architecture’s Research Conversations seminars comprise work-in-progress and upgrade presentations by students undertaking the Architectural Design MPhil/PhD and Architectural and Urban History and Theory MPhil/PhD. All current UCL staff and students are welcome to attend.

Held regularly throughout the academic year, the seminars are attended by the programme directors, Professor Jonathan Hill and Professor Sophia Psarra, PhD Coordinators, Dr. Nina Vollenbröker and Dr Sophie Read, and other PhD supervisors.

Image: Sound transducer polar patterns as sectional solids - 90 degree rotation overlay (Credit: Jonathan Tyrrell)