In 1829 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote that “architecture is ‘petrified’ music.”1 This quote is now often seen as proposing an overly poetic and generous equivalence between architecture and music’s shared logics of composition and effect. Yet, Goethe’s words might still be useful to think about architecture and music’s baser affinity: architecture makes noise. Or rather, while buildings themselves are rarely “heard” beyond the creak of wood framing and the dull hum of mechanical conditioning, the production of architecture, from the construction site all the way back to sites of material extraction, is an exceptionally noisy affair.
This rarely-considered sonic attribute of architecture’s production is made explicit in this document, where the sound levels of mechanical equipment from different Turkish mining companies—drills,●1 trucks,●2 and compressors●3—are quantified in decibels, spatializing sound as a function of energy. Here, sound might be seen as a measure for the economic expediency of the Turkish and international construction industry: the noisier the site of extraction, the more rapidly Turkey’s mineral resources are being extracted for use nationally or abroad. This positive correlation between noise and economic vigor implies its own inversion. What is the cost of silence at a site of extraction, bearing in mind less CO2 production, fewer toxic pollutants, and less pressure on vulnerable human and more-than-human populations?
If we were to decide a genre for this document-as-score, it could be said that this list comprises a piece of site-specific musique concrète.2 A discordant and cacophonous flow of bodies, materials, and machines at the site of extraction, before the materials are “frozen” by their temporary instantiation into a fixed building. Like any piece of music, however, architecture’s “symphonic” clamor at the site of extraction must at some point come to an end.3 Whether this silence will occur because mineral resources at the site are exhausted, or because other economic and political actions bring extraction to a halt, remains to be seen.