Unfolding the Rhythm: Transmediary Thinking in Design

Abstract

This paper explores the intersection of sound and space in first-year design education through the "Unfolding the Rhythm" project. Sound is viewed as a dynamic force that shapes subjective experiences of time and space, creating invisible connections between people, objects, and places. The project captures sounds related to stories of escape from daily life, organising them into speculative spatial narratives using a digital audio workstation. These auditory tales are then translated into spatial notation drawings, which are further transformed into three-dimensional sound topographies within a predefined volume. This fluid void, representing non-hierarchical and open-ended layers of topography, becomes a component of the spatial narrative inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' "The Immortal." The story's spatial descriptions are intentionally omitted, with students detailing and reproducing these spaces in the void defined by subsequent sections. The singularity of each space influences the emergence of cross-sectional interactions that transform the collective topography of the story, creating a reversed process of space construction through cuts, sections. The resulting models, reflecting spatial intervals in "The Immortal," contribute to the evolution of transmediary spaces. This sectional thinking offers students a novel approach to the architectural design process. The workflow defined here involves cross-media transitions and imaginative gaps in translation that embrace diverse potential futures, non-linear cause-effect relationships, and organisational forms. As a result, the project considers temporal processes instead of static objects, topological formations instead of geometric operations, and new ways of thinking about materiality by seeking an immaterial approach to making space within auditory dimensions.

Keywords

• First-year design education
• Soundscape topography
• Section
• Translation
• Design process

Thanks

We would like to thank the 2022-23 Fall Semester first-year design students of MEF University Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, studio instructors (Didem Sağlam, Esra Sert, Tutku Sevinc, Zelal Zülfiye Rahmanalı Nottrott, Murad Adalı, Bengi Guldogan) who contributed to the studio process of Unfolding the Rhythm project and Burak Tamer for the Sound Design workshop. The images and drawings included in the article were added with permission from the students.

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