Workshops
WORKSHOP 1
FRIDAY 7 NOV at 11:30 – 13:00
Pool Street Cinema
This workshop invites participants to imagine and sketch vibrational architectures— architectures that foreground energetic, sonic, and vibratory capacities. Whereas architecture is conventionally conceived in relation to stability, fixity, and permanence, vibrational architectures are dynamic, unstable, and open. They generate spatial forms and processes that resist containment, prediction, and control, offering fertile tools for reimagining how architecture might be conceived, experienced, and designed. The workshop follows Gascia Ouzounian and Jonathan Tyrrell’s joint lecture, ‘On Vibrational Architectures’ which introduces theoretical frameworks and case studies from architecture and sound art. Participants are asked to attend this lecture, which will take place immediately before the workshop.
The workshop will be focused on design, with participants invited to sketch and share their own visions of vibrational architectures. Sketching may take shape in any form–architectural drawing, illustration, photography, sound recording, or another type of design response. Any medium and format will be welcome. Participants will be invited to create designs individually or in small groups. Selected designs may be considered for publication in the forthcoming volume Critical Handbook of Sonic Urbanism and featured on the website of the ERC-funded research project Sonorous Cities (soncities.org).
Recommended for architects, urbanists, artists, and sound practitioners.
Drawing materials (paper, tracing paper, pencils) will be provided; participants are welcome to bring their own materials.
Participants must attend the preceding lecture ‘On Vibrational Architectures’ (Friday 7 November, 10:00 – 11:00, 1 Pool Street, Cinema) for full contextual grounding.
WORKSHOP LEADERS
GASCIA OUZOUNIAN
University of Oxford
Gascia Ouzounian is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and Director of the European Research Council project Sonorous Cities: Towards a Sonic Urbanism (SONCITIES). Her research examines the relations between sound, space, and violence, focusing on how sonic and architectural practices shape urban experience and social life. She collaborates widely with architects, urbanists, and artists to develop new approaches to sonic design and spatial practice. She is the author of Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press, 2021) and The Trembling City (MIT Press, forthcoming 2026).
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@soncitiesÂ
JONATHAN TYRRELL
University College London
Jonathan Tyrrell is an Associate Professor at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where he teaches on the Design for Performance and Interaction, and Design for Manufacture postgraduate programmes. As Director of Exhibitions for the Bartlett he also curates and oversees the school’s celebrated degree shows and external exhibitions. His research explores relationships between sound, matter, and the politics of listening, both from a theoretical and practice-based perspective. His spatial-sonic installations have been exhibited in Toronto, London, Berlin, and most recently in Salzkammergut, Austria, for the European Capital of Culture 2024.
WORKSHOP 2
FRIDAY 7 NOV at 11:30 – 13:00
Pool Street Room 301
There are many ways to record immersive audio. Techniques including near coincident ambisonic microphones, spaced arrays and more post-produced approaches using mono and stereo mics all have their relative benefits and drawbacks. This workshop intends to be a deep dive into what makes the different techniques work and where you might choose one over the others.
WORKSHOP LEADER
JACK REYNOLDS
BBC Research and Development
Jack Reynolds has been a Development Producer for the BBC Research and Development Dept for the last eight years, working on a wide range of immersive audiovisual content. He is also a lecturer in Spatial Audio at University College London (where he gained his Masters in Electronic and Electrical Engineering) and is also the proprietor of Reynolds Microphones Ltd, hand building high end microphones and arrays.
Jack has a wealth of knowledge in immersive audio production and 3D microphone array design and a passion for delving into the differences between different recording approaches to suit specific use cases.
WORKSHOP 3
FRIDAY 7 NOV at 11:30 – 13:00
UCL Marshgate, Room 118
This workshop investigates vibrational listening as a mode of engaging with sound through tactile means. Drawing on recent projects, participants will explore how sound inhabits and activates physical matter. Through hands-on experiments with vibrational speakers, transducers, and resonant surfaces, participants will discover how raw vibratory energy can be transformed into complex sonic textures. Using modular synthesis and effects pedals, we will process and improvise with recorded vibrations and reflect on compositional and artistic strategies for working with sonic materiality.
WORKSHOP LEADER
GERARD GORMLEY
Independent Artist / Buckinghamshire New University
Gerard Gormley is an Irish composer and sound artist whose work investigates the sonic potentials of space, architecture, and place. His practice evolves through experimental processes that explore how sound interacts with spatial and material environments. Much of his work unfolds at a granular level, attending to microsonic and microtextural detail.
His recent album and installation project Concrete Dreams of Sound channels audio through building materials using contact microphones and vibrational speakers. Sounds were recorded in situ, through concrete, water, and air, and subsequently reinserted into those same spaces, creating recursive, site-specific compositions. The work reveals how built materials mediate, filter, and transform sonic energy, proposing a mode of composition that is fundamentally architectural: a practice of listening with and through matter. The Quietus writes that the album’s ‘alternation between voluminous hum and gossamer-thin but rich textures instils a sense of elegant dynamism… conjuring a transportive experience.’
Gormley’s work has been presented at The MAC Belfast, Modern Art Oxford, DAAD Gallery (Berlin), Café OTO (London), After (Berlin), XMTR and Sono-Electro Festival (St Leonards-on-Sea), Cannes Festival, Storung Festival (Spain), The Cube at Virginia Tech, and Sonorities Festival (Belfast), and has been broadcast nationally on cinema and television in Ireland and the UK.Â
He is Senior Lecturer in Audio and Music Production at Buckinghamshire New University.