The Shape of Music

Music and Architecture seem to have an inverse relationship. They are often described in each other's terms. One is weightless; the other is material. Each has qualities of the other. Music has size, color, form. Architecture is rhythmic, poetic, lyrical. Music can transform environment. Architect Erich Mendelsohn sketched buildings to music, referring to his sketches as 'musical compositions.

In this enchanting volume, a combination of an artist's sketchbook and an architectural design statement, Architect Warren Schwartz, a Founding Principal at the renowned Boston based firm of Schwartz/Silver and lead architect for the Shaw Center for the Arts and Tanglewood House among many other works, explores how music has influenced his practice. Looking back over his career and life experiences, Schwartz remembers how specific live performances, composers, musicians and pieces of music inspired many of the shapes and forms that would subsequently appear in his architectural plans and designs, and shares the drawings he immediately sketched out in these moments of transportation, pairing them with the works of architecture for which they provided the basis. A tone poem by Strauss is thus revealed to flow through Schwartz's designs for the National Music Museum, and Nuages by Debussy in his plans for Exhibition Bridge. The Shape of Music is both a work of art in its own right and an insightful glimpse into the creative process of an architect at the top of his game.