21. Seeing Music and Listening to Architecture

Iannis Xenakis has created architectural, musical, and visual works. His architectures are true spatial transpositions of musical works. His extraordinary way of linking space and music opened a new field of reflection and research. A short overview through illustrations from the Philips Pavilion, one of the origins of his inquiry in his Diatope (‘music to be seen’), to his project for the Cité de la Musique (‘a musical jewel box’) allows us to see the evolution of his work bringing forth an unprecedented relationship between architecture and music. In 1980, noting the mediocrity of concert halls of the time, he wrote, ‘we must invent an architectural form that will liberate collective listening’. La Philharmonie de Paris concert hall seems to be one answer to Xenakis's wish, creating a new architectural form serving music. As architects of La Philharmonie de Paris concert hall and music lovers, we wanted to create an instrument allowing immersion in music, echoing the spatialized contemporary music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A presentation of La Philharmonie de Paris concert hall will highlight the two different approaches, with some parallel paths, and with similar goals: to create an experience that is both musical and visual, allowing one to ‘see music’ and to ‘hear architecture’.