The Place of Silence: Architecture / Media / Philosophy

(Hardback)

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The Place of Silence explores the poetics and politics of silence in architecture. Bringing together contributions by internationally recognized scholars in architecture and the humanities, it explores the diverse practices, affects, politics and cultural meanings of silence, silent places and silent buildings in historical and contemporary contexts. What counts as silence in specific situations is highly relative, and the term itself carries complex and varied significations which make it a revealing field of study. Chapters explore a range of themes, from the apparent loss of silence in the contemporary urban world; through designed silent spaces; to the forced silences of oppression, catastrophe, or technological breakdown. The book unfolds a rich and complementary array of perspectives which address through the lens of architecture and place questions of sound, atmosphere, and attunement, together building a volume which will form the key scholarly resource on architecture and silence.

Reviews

There is an essential relation between place and silence. In The Place of Silence, Mark Dorrian and Christos Kakalis allow us to explore that relation in its multiplicity of forms through a wonderful array of essays essays that move across different places and spaces and through a variety of media and disciplines. The result is a ground-breaking work that allows new insights into the character, not only of place and silence, but also of sound and space, emptiness and fullness, presence and absence, listening and attention, stillness and withdrawal. This is a book for everyone who has ever listened to the silence of a place or wondered at the place of silence itself. * Professor Jeff Malpas, Distinguished Professor, University of Tasmania *
Libraries were filled with the sounds of noisy mumblers prior to silent reading. Rather than absence, silence like a pregnant pause is often replete with significance. This array of lucid essays by respected scholars skillfully plumbs the many dimensions of silence in architecture: spaces, objects, materials, thoughts, cultural practices, atmospheres and the chthonic. Figuring in these accounts are the stories of modern and historical architects, artists, musicians and philosophers acting across many scales from landscape to theaters and even within private toilet rooms. In todays cacophony when people are enamored with technology as an immediate universal salve, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking a quieter, subtler, deeper human-centered alternative that sings with unexpected approaches. * Professor Paul Emmons, Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, Virginia Tech, USA *

Author Bio

Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and co-directs Metis, an atelier for art, architecture and urbanism. He has been a visiting professor at the Arkitektskolen Aarhus (Denmark), University of Michigan (USA), and Tianjin University (China), and a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Christos Kakalis is an architect and Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape of Newcastle University.