Entire Thesis Presentation

Over the past several years, there has been a question that I've been preoccupied with, keeping me up at night and all that: Can music of a particular region be reflected in the region's architecture? Research has shown that basic ideas about a particular music are rooted in its region's language. This thesis explores such a connection between music and architecture within the historic islamic city of Cairo, applying arabic melodic modes, or as they will be referred to from this point on as maqams, to create a place for listening, "il Masmaa".

Before getting into that, let me put you in context with some of the other research that has been done about this connection between music and architecture. Throughout my research, I have noticed that there are five main different ways of addressing this connection:

1) Music and architecture being connected through proportion, where the proportions of architecture correspond to the harmonic proportions of music.

2) Through rhythm, where, as debussy put it, "music is the space between notes".

3) Through acoustics, where architecture is utilized as a resonator of sound, much like a musical instrument.

4) Through synesthesia, or the mapping of one sense onto another, where architecture becomes the product of a reflex musical inspiration.

5) Or through a method of re-interpretation through deconstruction, where a rational algorithm is used for the translation between arts. An example would be Steven Holl's stretto house, where he used composer Bela Bartok's "music for strings, percussion, and celesta" as a reference. The light curvy roof element represents the string section, the heavy masonry walls represents the percussion, while the celesta is represented in the walls that connect the other two elements.

My first stabs in applying architectonic form to music was through a series of animations I conducted on specific musical pieces. Since the research findings use western music as a reference, I felt that comparing a western music piece with an arabic piece was important. The pieces chosen were Pachelbel's canon in Dmaj, and Um Kalthoum's "Alf leila we leila".

Pairing these animations together I found to be very revealing. My expectations were that the differences between arabic and western music in respect to rhythm and musical intervals would be apparent in these animations. They are not. What is apparent however is how the musical structures differ from one another. The Canon piece is very cyclical in nature, there is a simple chord progression that goes on and on, which acts as a central unifying element, and the themes and variations are being applied on to it. Where the arabic piece is much more episodical. Other ideas could be extracted by pairing both these animations together, which I may choose to explore later down the line. I then make the comparison between this idea of musical structure with some of  the architecture of the same period; the Central "big room" space of Palladio, to the series of courtyards, or episodes, of the ottoman house.

Applying some of these ideas to islamic Cairo, I took upon the most preserved street on the site, the main through fare between the historic gates of the fatamid city. I analyzed and animated it the same way I did the music. It became apparent to me, while walking down the street, that you can easily identify nine major different zones within this path, each zone an episode having its own identity and texture.

The following video is an amalgamation of audio-visual experiences of the site, composed to give you a feel of what its like walking down this path. On the animation and figure ground, I have pin pointed a series interventions that would be composed on the path. Each one of these interventions would deal with the macro-function of the street, which is now a public museum of islamic culture, as well as the micro-character of each zone, all using ideas of arabic music in design generation.

I was hoping to actually get to design all the interventions, but apparently I am too ambitious for my own good. The first zone, the moqadema, or introdctuion, was picked for further exploration, in hope to return to the street later in the process. Using the episodical ottoman house as a paradigm, the proposed building is set to explore the ideas of the maqam in arabic music.

The maqam is the foundation of all melody in arabic music, and the tetrachord is the most basic element of a maqam. Each tetrachord has a unique pattern of intervals - but more than that - rules for how you move between notes. Thus maqams have a very different kind of structure, feel, and importance than western modal scales, and its these tetrachords that are in the center of this architectural project. The project is taking this basic unit of the tetrachord and, through juxtaposition, seeing how they interrelate in architectonic form.

There are many maqams, but the ones that I have chosen to focus on in this exploration are Rast, Bayati, Hijaz, Saba, and Sikah; the same five that are traditionally used for the call to prayer in Islam.  Because of the structure and spacing of their musical intervals, each of these maqams, different characters and personalities, those that can be translated in architectonic elements. The figure you see here on the left lists each maqam with its attitude towards proportion, light, pattern, acoustics, material..etc..

The building is organized around five clusters of rooms, each one depicting one of the 5 maqams

I call this building "el masma" which could be translated into "the place of listening", or "the listener". It is intended to be a place where one goes to learn about these maqams, to listen to others either playing music, reciting quran, or practicing the call to prayer using these maqams.

Traditionally, the knowledge music has been passed down by a master to apprentice system, music was not documented, the culture was much more aural based, which goes with the claim that Cairo is an aural based community, where the whole city is in aural reach of the call to prayer.

Returning to il Masma3, Pragmatically, there are very few program requirements to fullfill, letting the focus of creating a variety and flexibility of spaces within the building to encourage communal interaction between those of knowledge and those seeking knowledge.The intent is to create 5 different spaces that correspond to each of the characters of these maqams. The most contributing factor that led to the generation of character is the application of the maqam interval proportions onto the vertical surface of the rooms.

Such studies have also been done on a number of minarets that exist along the street, which interestingly enough, all seem to adhere to the same interval proportions as maqams.
Spatially, each room is manipulated to emulate the character of each maqam. Upon entering the Northern gate, one finds themselves inside the Rast room - rast being the most celebrated maqam in egyptian music, used in most nationalistic and many folkloric songs. The Rast room functions as a pivot between the street and "el masma3", an in between space, serving both in public realm of the street and the private realm of "el masma3".
The existing site at the moment has one entering and confronting a blank wall before walking into the main space, which seems like an awkward jog. We must remember that such a jog is not uncommon in the Islamic architecture within the city, where this is necessary for privacy reasons, and to give a sense of enclosure when we finally are in the triangular open space infront of Al Hakim mosque, one of the biggest and eldest mosques in Cairo.


The challenge is how to make the Rast room serve as an enclosure on its own, yet provide a strong sense of direction allowing traffic to flow through to the street. The current solution creates a large setback, as opposed to the existing condition, closes off the west wall which now serves as an entrance to il masma, and keeps the east wall a free standing element, offset to allow views to the mosque minaret acting like a drawing in device. From the Rast room, one can enter the building and navigate through all the other spaces.


The Bayati room is the room with many attitudes towards space, adhering to the notion that the bayati maqam is one which many different variations occur;  scholars  don't agree on a distinct character, but many agree that the maqam has different flavors.


The Hijaz room has a very distinct and clear difference between the smaller and larger spaces, adhering tot the hijaz maqam interval pattern size (1/2 - 1 1/2 - 1/2).

Saba, the maqam attributed to music of sadness, is designed to utilize acoustics to create an vast echoing room, with a minimal source of light creeping into the building from the dome.

And the Sikah room, serves an above floor tight gallery space, peeking views into all the rooms, adhering to the notion that the Sikah maqam has the most narrowest range out of the five, and is usually paired with some of the other maqams in the music.

On an ending note, My very first aim of this thesis, way back when, was to combat the excessive power of westernization and globalization that is sweeping Egypt by storm for the last 200 years or so. My hope was to find clues within the region's music to help push the architectural evolution in another direction, one more unique to its place and context. What I found instead was a method of deconstructing music to get a better understanding about a region's culture on issues that I may have previously overlooked or taken for granted. The result building is meant to be conceived as what critical regionalism would consider a defamiliarization of music. Unfortunately, much like architectural globalization, there has been a process of musical globalization as well, and these concepts of  maqams are in danger of extinction. Such defamiliarization of the musical concepts only work then with repeat visitors, after students and scholars come and study these maqams over extended periods of time, the building starts to reveal itself, and after such connections are made, the student goes back out to rest of the city to make further connections with the architecture, in hope to understand ourselves better as Egyptians... In hope to understand ourselves better as arabs.