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INSTITUTE FOR SACRED MUSIC


Brennan Buck, Critic


Core I Studio, Fall 2022



Design for a center for the study and performance of sacred music in Museumpark, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the site of OMA’s Kunsthal. This project explores the auditory properties of a constructed landscape, taking inspiration from sacred caves throughout history, wherein the sinuous geometry of the cavern causes sound to echo in phase, creating a natural space for the amplification and proliferation of sound. Forms derived from these caves surround a program of more formal spaces for the study and production of music - classrooms, archives, and rehearsal spaces, all building to a concert hall on the south end of the building. 





These cavernous corridors create another informal program in between the formal spaces: as they expand and contract, each corridor creates a larger space for informal performance, with the sounds from that space echoing through the rest of the hallway in harmonic phase. The niches in the texture of the exposed 3D-printed rammed-earth concrete allows sound to reverberate in its creases. 




The roof of this project serves as a means of mediating the Museumpark with the residential neighborhood across the S100. Partere-like mounds emerge, shaped by the massing of the rammed-earth concrete walls of the caverns; these mounds serve as funnels for each of the formal and informal performance spaces below, creating a sound-garden on the building’s green-roof and forming unique soundscapes as inhabitants wander through.