Le Cylindre Sonore / Bernhard Leitner | Classics On Architecture Lab

Architects: Bernhard Leitner
Year: 1987
Photographs: Bernhard Leitner
City: Paris
Country: France

Le Cylindre Sonore, designed by Bernhard Leitner, is a fusion of architecture and sound located in a bamboo garden at Paris’s Parc de la Villette. This public art piece creates a space where sound and human perception merge. The double-cylinder structure, 10 meters in diameter and 5 meters high, is accessed via a descending stairway, contrasting with the park’s openness while offering an introspective environment. Behind eight perforated concrete panels, vertical loudspeakers form a resonance chamber, amplifying sound, with an outer ring housing functional access to an underground control room. Water rivulets flowing into a basin neutralize urban noise and acoustically tune the space for focused listening. The soundscape, created by 24 loudspeakers, features drifting textures, circular sonic lines, and high-pitched tones juxtaposed against the static concrete structure. Leitner’s work combines static and dynamic acoustics, using sound as a material to shape an immersive architectural experience.

Architecture and sound work together to create spaces with dynamic, flexible contours, forming invisible territories that, unrestricted by physical boundaries, amplify their influence. While architecture is often considered a visual discipline that establishes limits and boundaries, this interplay challenges that notion.

Le Cylindre Sonore / Bernhard Leitner | Classics on Architecture Lab

While these boundaries are fundamental, they fail to fully capture the essence of architecture. By its nature, the interior of a building defines an exterior, and this exterior, in turn, generates additional spaces. These spaces contribute to the formation of the city and the intricate interconnections that create its richness.

Bernhard Leitner is one of the few individuals who, in this significant role, actively pursue connections that constantly interact and combine, aiming to fill spaces with the simultaneous and harmonious attraction of both architectural and sonorous elements.

As both an architect and a composer of sound, he understands that perception encompasses sound as a material, which must be mastered, along with the dynamic lines that guide individuals to see and experience built spaces.

Sound is not an undefined, unfocused entity that subjugates individuals to the dominance of nature with no possibility of escape. Instead, sound is measurable; it defines lines, constructs walls, and permeates spaces in accordance with architectural principles.

The space people inhabit, which emanates from their bodies, integrates their perceptions, movements, and capacity to interpret these perceptions, each shaped differently by the cultural contexts to which they belong.

Space and sound are not confined to specific spans of time; they represent a continuous, transitory state without end. Bernhard Leitner presents a space for both seeing and hearing, one that individuals experience and actively transform. Even breathing becomes an integral part of this dynamic, ever-evolving architecture.

His kinetic and architectural compositions uncover aspects of the world, forming defined spaces—receptacles for the body—such as the Sound Space at the Technical University of Berlin and the Cylindre Sonore in the Parc de la Villette. These works demonstrate the potential for a new architecture that unites the expertise of the architect, the artistry of the composer, and the deliberate intent of the sculptor.

Le Cylindre Sonore is set within a bamboo garden, nestled in a valley-like, sunken landscape in Paris’s Parc de la Villette. This sound architecture was commissioned as a piece of public art, or intervention artistique, for Section IV of the park.

The upper edge of the double cylinder aligns with the level of the bordering allées. Visitors approaching from the park descend a long stairway into the sound space before entering the garden. Upon leaving, they pass through the sound space once more before ascending back to the higher level of the park.

The sound emanating from the structure draws passersby, encouraging them to pause and focus on its static, stationary form. This enclosed architecture, open only to the sky, is intentionally designed to contrast with the expansive park. The cylindrical space enables focused listening, offering a contemplative rediscovery of oneself and a transcendent connection to the site.

The double cylinder has an inner diameter of 10 meters and a height of 5 meters. Behind the eight perforated concrete elements, three vertically mounted loudspeakers are arranged like a column. The circular space between the two curved walls serves a functional purpose, allowing for the maintenance of the loudspeakers and providing access to the underground control room. Primarily, however, this ring functions as a resonance chamber, amplifying sound through the weight and tension of the curved surfaces.

From each concrete element, narrow rivulets of water flow into a basin that encircles the ground of the cylinder space like an island. The soothing sound of the water masks the noise of the urban environment, creating a neutralized acoustic atmosphere. These rivulets help acoustically tune the inner space, forming a crucial element that enables the sensory systems—ears, skin, body, and brain—to engage in focused and concentrated listening.

In the Cylindre Sonore, sound spaces are constructed, developed, and varied between the sound columns positioned behind the eight perforated concrete elements, comprising a total of 24 loudspeakers. These spaces are temporal, evolving over time.

The Cylindre Sonore features statically drifting, room-filling sound textures, with circular supporting sound lines tracing the shape of the architectural structure. Prickling, high-pitched tones along the envelope walls contrast sharply with the archaic stillness of the concrete cylinder. The design incorporates massive, heavy, or light transparent spatial bracings, with guitar-like sound textures serving as static filler material. Materials with delayed reverberation times further soften the acoustic hardness of the concrete.