Architectonics of Music

“Architectonics of Music” is an ongoing inquiry, initiated in Steven Holl’s studio at Columbia GSAPP, into the intersections between music and architecture, investigating how rhymes and resonances may serve as springboards for new vocabularies and forms for architecture.

Both music and architecture are inherently spatial and space-defining endeavors. Music is rooted in inhabiting space through time—acting, in the words of John Cage, “like a house to dwell in.” “Architectonics of Music” mines the ideas and approaches of both disciplines to promote and distill the individuation of vocabulary and language through which music and architecture may renew themselves to facilitate new disciplinary visions.

This discussion will be illustrated through student work and built projects by Steven Holl Architects, including Maggie’s Centre Barts (London, 2017), the Lewis Center for the Arts (Princeton, 2017), and the Daeyang Gallery and House (Seoul, 2012).

Speakers:
Dimitra Tsachrelia, Partner, Steven Holl Architects
Raphael Mostel, Composer

About the Speakers: 
Dimitra Tsachrelia is a Partner at Steven Holl Architects who has contributed to the design of academic and arts institutions since 2008 and has led the Hudson Valley office’s projects since 2016. Tsachrelia leads the designs for the L-House in Hudson, NY, currently under construction, and the ‘Z’ Space artists-in-residency studio in Westchester, NY. She has coordinated the Hudson Valley Architectural Archive and Research Library Building (2019) and expansion (2023), realized the Catskill Creek Addition (2022), and has led R&D projects including the realization of the Ex of IN House (2016). Internationally and across the US, she directed the competition for the Janacek Concert Hall in Ostrava (currently in bidding process) and worked on the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (2018), the Glasgow School of Art (2014), and the Campbell Sports Center (2013). She designed and coordinated the launch of the exhibition Steven Holl: Making Architecture. Tsachrelia received her Diploma from the School of Architecture at Patras University and obtained MSADD with honors from Columbia GSAPP in 2008, where she co-teaches with Steven Holl as Adjunct Assistant Professor. She is a licensed architect in New York, holds the Living Future Accreditation for holistic sustainable design standards, and is a LEED Green Associate. She serves on the board of directors at the Steven Myron Holl Foundation.

Raphael Mostel is a composer with a notably broad range of achievements. He has co-taught “Architectonics of Music” with Steven Holl at Columbia GSAPP and consulted on a number of architectural projects since 2008. The Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center mounted a retrospective exhibition on his spatially-conceived compositions for one-of-a-kind instruments. Many of these performances have been broadcast, such as his composition performed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki dedicated to the victims of the atom bombs. At the other end of his artistic spectrum, Mostel’s compositions for “standard” instruments have been presented by the Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, and others. His most-performed composition, “The Travels of Babar,” is intended to further for the 21st century what Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” provided for the 20th: “to introduce audiences of all ages and levels of sophistication to the power and magic of concert music” (The New York Times). Mostel has lectured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and the American Center of Tokyo, and has written for The New York Times, Klassisk Musikmagazin, Forward, Deutsche Welle, Ongaku Geijutsu, and Architectural Record.