Boris Stoyanov
Crescendo
UF SoA
Spring 2022
Music Museum
Professor John Maze
Crescendo is an institution without objects, a museum that exists purely in the dimension of sound. Unlike traditional music museums, where relics of the past are encased and displayed, this space is not concerned with preservation but with the experience of sonic phenomena itself. Sound is the artifact, the material, and the architecture is tuned accordingly. Every volume, every surface, every edge is calibrated to manipulate, reflect, or absorb waves, shaping the auditory experience as precisely as a cathedral or a concert hall.
The composition of the building itself mirrors the dynamism of sound—fractured, angular, shifting. In plan, it is restless, resisting symmetry or repetition. There is no singular axis of movement, no singular way to traverse it, reinforcing the ephemeral nature of its subject matter. Like music, the architecture unfolds in time, guiding the visitor through a sequence of spaces that are less about viewing and more about listening. The experience is one of immersion, where walls seem to lean and fracture in response to sound rather than stand as static enclosures.
At the core of the museum is its central void—the Echo Chamber. A multi-story chasm, it is the heart of the project, where sound is amplified, prolonged, and transformed. It is not simply an architectural volume but an instrument in itself, a space that can be played, resonating with the voices, footfalls, and compositions that pass through it. The nature of the chamber shifts throughout the day—sometimes filled with structured compositions, other times left to capture the incidental sounds of the museum’s visitors. The effect is one of reverberation in both the literal and conceptual sense: a space where sound lingers, where it leaves a trace before dissipating.
The program remains loosely defined, resisting the rigidity of traditional museum typologies. Some rooms act as pure resonators, others as anechoic chambers, eliminating all but the faintest of frequencies. Some spaces are designed for communal listening, others for isolated sonic encounters. Movement through the museum is composed as much by sound as by architecture—pathways curve and fragment in response to auditory conditions, shifting the visitor’s sense of space not just visually, but through the ears.
Crescendo does not seek to contain sound but to release it, to give it volume—both literal and figurative. It is a space where the ephemeral is made tangible, where architecture does not frame objects but orchestrates an experience. Here, music is not a fixed entity but a force, a medium through which space itself is understood.