An Archi-Musical Reimagination of the Belltower Typology

Jacob Comerci (Taubman) and Tiffany Ng (SMTD)

As architecture and music faculty, we are developing a week-long interdisciplinary workshop that brings carillon students (from SMTD, LSA, and CoE) and architecture students together. Over the course of one week in October 2019, students will tour the university’s bell towers and discover an array of controversial issues surrounding the carillon, from their internal mechanisms to the mechanisms of power which usher these monuments into being. We will discuss selected readings to sound out the relationship of the carillon to architecture, public soundscapes, and its place in civic society. Students will spend the remainder of the week participating in interdisciplinary group design exercises, culminating in a radical reimagination of the bell tower typology.