Alto

When music and language are recorded, these immaterial expressions take on physical form, either as sound waves or marks on a page. Temporality is transcended as future generations can reenact and reinvent this inherited culture. While this is fundamentally a process of creative abstraction, it is analogous to the thermodynamic phenomena of deposition and sublimation, whereby a substance transforms directly from gas to solid, and vice versa. Project name casts the ephemerality of music as standing waves, and crystallizes the gestural forms of writing as clouds of light.

Our inspiration sprang from the cultural significance of Hebrew, both as the mother tongue of monotheism and as the living language that has unified the Jewish diaspora upon returning to Israel. The proposal’s focal point is a chandelier that encapsulates this history, bringing both ancient and modern Hebrew characters to light. 

We were also drawn to the unique compositional and typographic characteristics of the written language. The tendrils that accentuate the Hebrew alphabet, rhythmically peak above a clear horizon and flicker like sound-waves along a line of equilibrium.  

Split into two strata, the wall panels that line the perimeter of the lounge celebrate the musical achievements of Jewish artists. The lower level is defined by horizontally striated hardwood and carved to match the rhythmic progression of “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” ( בײַ מיר ביסטו שיין, "To Me You're Beautiful”), a Yiddish song that became an international sensation in the 1930s, spawning a spectrum of reinterpretations. This simple walking-base rhythm serves as a foundation for the upper reaches of the lounge, where 18 musical compositions by Jewish artists are stitched together, spanning genres and decades. 

This project proposal submitted in 2018 and developed in collaboration with Craig Cook of Archotus and Idan Naor Workshop.