Concrete Dreams of Sound

Gormley, Gerard (2025) Concrete Dreams of Sound. In: Sound Environment Symposium.

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Abstract

If music were made of architecture, it would resonate with the textures, forms, and materials of built space - its rhythms shaped by columns, its melodies carved in stone. Concrete Dreams of Sound imagines this possibility by transforming the Barbican’s Brutalist architecture into both an instrument and a resonator. Rather than using buildings as backdrops for sound, this project embeds sound within them - recording echoes through stairwells, vibrations through concrete walls, and underwater hums from ponds. The architecture is not just heard; it is played. A violin becomes a probe, tracing sonic contours of surfaces, drawing out the character of materials - concrete, glass, steel - not for harmony but for texture and presence. Music, here, is not composed but discovered: it dwells in walls, lingers in airshafts, reverberates through the bones of the building. Architecture becomes both the score and the performer, a body that sings back, a kind of living archive of sound. Through this, Concrete Dreams of Sound proposes an architecture that is not silent but always speaking, always listening, where every wall and corridor holds a memory, a note, a voice still unfolding.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Divisions:	College of Creative Arts, Technology and Engineering > Performing Arts
Depositing User:	Research and Knowledge Exchange Office Admin 1
Date Deposited:	16 Jul 2026 09:47
Last Modified:	16 Jul 2026 09:47
URI:	https://bnu.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/21119

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