In 1958 Le Corbusier was too busy working on Chandigarh to focus his attention on a comparably minor commission: the Philips Industries Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Brussels. So Corb outsourced the project to Iannis Xenakis – the renowned Greek composer who at that time was up-and-coming in the architect’s firm – with the assignment to create an “electronic poem”. How’s that for a brief?
As with his musical compositions, Xenakis applied complex mathematical models to formulate the design, coming up with an arrangement of nine hyperbolic parabloid shapes made from pre-stressed concrete and girded by steel tension cables. Xenakis also wrote a composition, Concrète PH, derived from manipulated recordings of burning charcoal. In the main interior cavern, or “stomach”, Corbusier and composer Edgar Varèse engineered a (perhaps overly) complicated multimedia piece showcasing as much new technology as possible: 350 speakers were embedded in the walls, slides and films were projected across the curved surfaces, and 51 different lighting configurations illuminated the space. I (ew)
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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