How has modern architectural experimentation shaped the ways we listen and communicate? The development of architectural acoustics has been entangled with profound transformations in media, music, and the public sphere. Over the past two centuries, designers’ evolving efforts to alter the sound of buildings—to evoke impressions of monumentality or intimacy, make speech intelligible, or ensure privacy—have encouraged people to hear and interact in new ways.

Join us for a conversation with Joseph Clarke, Sabine von Fischer, and John Durham Peters on the history of modern acoustics in relation to art, society, and communication technology, around Clarke’s new book Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space (2021).

This event is free and open to the public. Please register here.

Joseph L. Clarke is a 2020 CCA Research Fellow, Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Toronto, and author of Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space (2021).

Sabine von Fischer is architecture critic for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, author of Das akustische Argument: Wissenschaft und Hörerfahrung in der Architektur des 20 Jahrhunderts (2019), and a 2010 CCA Collection Research Grant recipient.

John Durham Peters is Maria Rosa Menocal Professor of English and of Film and Media Studies at Yale University and the author of, among other books, The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2015).