by Victor Khoueiry

"Everything happens as if there were one-to-one oscillations between symmetry, order, rationality, and asymmetry, disorder, irrationality in the reactions between the epochs of civilizations. My own musical research on sounds with continuous variation in relation to time [...] led me to lean towards geometric structures based on straight lines: ruled surfaces" Iannis Xenakis, Greek composer and architect (1922 - 2001)

The new building for the Faculty of Music at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, by the consortium of Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux/ Saucier + Perrotte Architectes, demonstrates a combination of two arts — music and architecture — through the language of materials and the composition of spatial sequences.

I had always thought that music, of all art forms, had the least influence on architecture, maybe because architectural discourse is so often silent regarding the nonvisual senses. But the words of Xenakis helped me understand the role of music in building design.

Both architecture and music have form and order, structure and rhythm. In this music-school building, the architects have succeeded in expressing this relationship in a clear language of form and materials responding to a complex program.   >>>

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West and south elevations of the Faculty of Music at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, by Menkès Shooner Dagenais LeTourneux/ Saucier + Perrotte Architectes. Photo: Zeina Najjar Music school studio. Photo: Zeina Najjar   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.