Scoring the City
Linking to our ongoing interest in the possibilities of sonic urbanism, this experiment at the intersection takes inspiration from graphic scores in music as dynamic forms that offer new models for the relationship between architecture, design practices, and social life: in other words, between scoring and performing urban space.
Over 12 months, the collaborators hosted 4 workshops together with Gascia Ouzounian, in very different cities with common challenges: London and Paris, two global cities needing to create flexible space to accommodate rapid economic and socio-cultural change; and Belfast and Beirut, cities marked by conflict needing to find common spaces across sectarian divides. These invited architects and composers to collaborate to create scores for sites in transition that challenge the static nature of the architectural blueprint, published at scoring.city.
The project was supported in Belfast by Connor McCafferty and in London by Jake Johnson as part of a work placement during his CSM MArch studies.
As well as being Associate Professor of Music at Oxford University, Ouzounian is co-director of the research group Recomposing the City and artistic director of the record label Optophono. Scoring the City follows TM’s collaboration with Recomposing the City on the Beirut-London exchange workshop Urban Soundscape and the Politics of Memory.
