Buildings that Sing: Architectural Design for Choral Performance

Abstract

Architecture filters sound, and therefore music. The design of concert halls favours a specific quality and experience of musical sound. Choral church music, which adapted to profit musically from the acoustics and spaces of a variety of church typologies, provides a counterpoint to normative concert hall design. As the number of decommissioned churches increases in Canada, these structures are ideal to be retrofitted into concert halls that draw on the historic connections between architecture, choral music, and acoustics. Working in an interdisciplinary fashion between architecture, musicology, and acoustics, I will retrofit a decommissioned church in Halifax, Canada, into a concert hall that uses music as an instrument to foster gathering while incorporating variable acoustics and performance layouts. I will build the acoustic setting of the concert hall by manipulating the triad of form, sound source location, and surface materials.