Between Noise and Silence: Architecture since the 1970s

Main Article Content

Alexandra Brown
Andrew Leach

Abstract

This essay considers noise in architectural discourse as it might lend form to issues hitherto tabled in rather different terms. We ask what noise offers this discussion or, perhaps better put, what seeing architectural debates in terms of distinctions between noise and silence, random and structured sound, silence as absence and pregnant void might add to disciplinary debates within architectural theory and criticism. By treating these acoustic values analogously rather than literally we wish to suggest that reading the late postmodern moment through this filter opens out new possibilities for a critical assessment of this period and its present-day legacies.

Article Details

Section
On Noise (Peer Reviewed)
Author Biographies

Alexandra Brown, Griffith University

Alexandra Brown is a lecturer in Architecture at the Griffith School of Environment on Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus. An architect and director of the Brisbane-based practice Studio Mitt, she is completing her PhD in architectural history and theory at the University of Queensland.

Andrew Leach, Griffith University

Andrew Leach is an associate professor of Architecture at the Griffith School of Environment on Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus. Among his books are What is Architectural History? (2010), Architecture, Disciplinarity and the Arts (edited with John Macarthur, 2009) and Manfredo Tafuri: Choosing History (2007).