This talk will present ideas, experiments, and built works that sketch a meandering research trajectory through the field of architecture and sound. It proposes a widening of the anthropocentric frame through which the field is often analyzed, thus revealing sound’s broader potential to articulate radical intersubjectivity between humans, non-humans, and their shared material environments. It will discuss recent independent built works - alongside collaborative projects with experimental architect Philip Beesley and artist Dereck Revington - that explore sonic materiality and vibrational ontology. This practice-based work, combined with readings in sound studies, post-humanism, material science, and bioacoustics, forms the basis of emerging PhD research. Underpinning this project is an aspiration to shift the discourse on architecture and sound from a marginal aesthetic concern to a central method for addressing the complexities of the contemporary built world.

Jonathan Tyrrell is a graduate of the University of Waterloo School of Architecture where he also teaches as an adjunct professor. His current research focusses on sound, space, materiality, and intersubjectivity. He is an associate at Dereck Revington Studio in Toronto where he has worked on a series of award-winning public art projects and memorials. Prior to this he worked extensively with Philip Beesley on the Hylozoic Series. Recent independent art commissions include Sounding Bodies (Nuit Blanche Toronto 2019), a 16 channel sound and video installation which used sonic transducers to transform metal roofing panels into inhabitable loudspeakers.