Music and Architecture : Translating Musical Experiences into Architecture

This thesis aims to explore a method for translating music into architecture using the emotional impact as the main link between them. The thesis consists of a review of historical examples of how the two art forms connect, a review of present-day examples, and my positioning on those. As a theoretical base for the translation, I use desire as discussed by Anne Carson in her essay Eros and the Bittersweet, and by Alberto Pérez-Gómez’s book Built upon Love. I further engage with theories on aesthetics developed by Susan Buck-Morss and Juhani Pallasmaa to situate my specific mode of translation. I work with the piece “Amarilli mia Bella” by Giulio Caccini and translate it by dissecting my emotional response and representing it through architectural fragments. In my fragments, I focus on senses through the bodily experience of materiality, light and shadow, and the level of openness. The aim is not to design a house with a specific programme but to design a method for translating music to architecture.