The Place of Silence

There is an essential relation between place and silence. In The Place of Silence, Mark Dorrian and Christos Kakalis allow us to explore that relation in its multiplicity of forms through a wonderful array of essays essays that move across different places and spaces and through a variety of media and disciplines. The result is a ground-breaking work that allows new insights into the character, not only of place and silence, but also of sound and space, emptiness and fullness, presence and absence, listening and attention, stillness and withdrawal. This is a book for everyone who has ever listened to the silence of a place or wondered at the place of silence itself. * Professor Jeff Malpas, Distinguished Professor, University of Tasmania * Libraries were filled with the sounds of noisy mumblers prior to silent reading. Rather than absence, silence like a pregnant pause is often replete with significance. This array of lucid essays by respected scholars skillfully plumbs the many dimensions of silence in architecture: spaces, objects, materials, thoughts, cultural practices, atmospheres and the chthonic. Figuring in these accounts are the stories of modern and historical architects, artists, musicians and philosophers acting across many scales from landscape to theaters and even within private toilet rooms. In todays cacophony when people are enamored with technology as an immediate universal salve, this book is a must-read for anyone seeking a quieter, subtler, deeper human-centered alternative that sings with unexpected approaches. * Professor Paul Emmons, Washington-Alexandria Architecture Center, Virginia Tech, USA *

Mark Dorrian holds the Forbes Chair in Architecture at the University of Edinburgh and co-directs Metis, an atelier for art, architecture and urbanism. He has been a visiting professor at the Arkitektskolen Aarhus (Denmark), University of Michigan (USA), and Tianjin University (China), and a visiting scholar at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Christos Kakalis is an architect and Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape of Newcastle University.

Introduction, Mark Dorrian (Edinburgh College of Art, UK) and Christos Kakalis (Newcastle University, UK) Mediating Silence 1. Then There Was War: John Hejduk's Silent Witnesses as Nuclear Criticism, Mark Dorrian (Edinburgh College of Art, UK) 2. Textures of Silence in Claire Denis's Beau Travail, Hannah Paveck (Kings College London, UK) 3. Listening to Visaginas: on the Rescaling of Silences and Sounds in a Former Soviet Nuclear Town, Benjamin Cope (European Humanities University, Lithuania) 4. Urban Silence and Informational Noise: a Study of Athenss Invisible Structures, Aikaterini Antonopoulou (University of Liverpool, UK) 5. The Silent Present: the Contemporary Atmosphere of Architectural Historiography, Amy Kulper (RISD, USA) Material Silences 6. Between the Lines, Manuela Antoniu (Japan) 7. The Silence of Michelangelos Hammer, Jonathan Foote (Aarhus School of Architecture, Denmark) 8. Making Silence: Modes of Emptiness in Iberian Art and Architecture, Ross Jenner (University of Auckland, New Zealand) 9. On Becoming Petrified: the Erotic Gaze in Architectural Conception, Carolina Dayer (Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark) Practising Silence 10. Silence, Paradox and Religious Topography, Christos Kakalis (Newcastle University, UK) 11. Silences Generating Space, Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul (AUT University, New Zealand) and Carl Mika (University of Waikato, New Zealand) 12. Silence in the Middle Ground: Aesthetic Immersion in the Geologic, Tiago Torres-Campos (University of Edinburgh, UK) 13. John Hejduk and Samuel Beckett: Going On, in Silence and Lateness, Jason O'Shaughnessy (University College Cork, Ireland) Silence and the Senses 14. Quiet Places Silent Space: Towards a Phenomenology of Silence, Gernot Bhme (Institut fr Praxis der Philosophie, Germany) 15. Silence Please! A Brief History of Silence at the Theatre, Louise Pelletier (UQM, Canada) 16. Vessels of Place: Auditory Landscapes, Cross-Cultural Echoes in South-West Victoria, Paul Carter (RMIT University, Australia) 17. Attunement and Silence, Alberto Prez-Gmez (McGill University, Canada) Bibliography Index