ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the analysis of the experience of silence/stillness/pausing in religious sites, urban environments and natural landscapes. It explores silence as mediated in film and theatrical performances, architectural design, architectural pedagogy, as well as architectural communication/representation. The book also presents how shared actions and events of silence were combined, taking the risk of intimacy that the urban environments of human interactions entail. It seeks to unfold the particularities of the gradual movement from an atmosphere of the land to the stillness of the sky and its possible transposition into architecture. The book examines the role of silence/stillness in architectural design through a comparison between Arvo Part’s tintinnabuli method and Cage’s chance and chart techniques. It explains notating possibilities of silence through an organic understanding of architectural representation in which the ‘sign’ and the ‘datum’ are in a constant re-negotiation.
