The Muses Labyrinth Beneath

Abstract

My thesis explores on how to reproduce life inherent in the musical form with architectural composition. The beauty of music attributes to its high degree of life inherent in its holistic form, which is affective, adaptive and generative. In my research paper I approach the quote "I call architecture frozen music "by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe in a metaphysical way. Relationship between form, composition and phenomenal experience are explained in terms of “flow” and “Bodies”. Space and time are understood in terms of virtual flowing force acting on bodies, that they are actualized as sounds in music and “frozen” as materialistic objects in architecture, affording our sensational experience. Composition, is understood as synthesizing of individual bodies with order into a holistic body, in which tensions are created by the differential relationship of its constituent bodies. Music, is the transitional interactions between our human bodies and the musical body actualized. While in architecture, “audiences” set their bodies into actions, empathizing with the frozen transitional form through time, synchronizing the physical body experience with the inner mental experience.
My thesis design reflects on the shift of architecture experience from existentially plastic and spatial experience, to mere time-compressed striking visual image, with the loss of experiential depth, under the information age. As an inverted version of “allegory of the cave”, my building functions as an immersive labyrinth with ambiguity and mystery hidden beneath ground, affording a retreating experience to urban wildscape explorers. It fulfilled the timeless task of architecture as stated by Pallasmaa – “understand and remember the shapeless flow of reality and, ultimately, to recognize and remember who we are.” The building situates itself in Paris, at the intersection of the abandoned La Petite Ceinture, an urban wildscape experiencing the transition from ruin to regeneration, and the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, where the histories of underground mining hidden beneath. The memories of two places intertwined at this counterpoint and synthesize into a frozen melody, as the body of the labyrinth. Though her body the labyrinth brings collective memories to present individual explorers. The spatial variations embodied promotes sequences of scenarios and potentials. Me as a composer, imagines different scenarios and interactions involving individual urban explorers as “audiences” or