Can music data be frozen into architecture?

Jan Henrik Hansen – TEDx Zurich

“I call architecture frozen music.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Jan Henrik Hansen is a Zurich-based architect/artist/designer who turns (time-based) music into (space-based) physical sculptures and architectural structures. Jan is an architect with background in music and he has been teaching and researching with well-known professors Gramazio & Kohler.


The work of Jan Henrik Hansen strives to transform parameters of musical notes and rythms into forms and volumes in physical space. In order to achieve that, he developed with interaction designer Armin Seltz  a software tool to visualize midi data in 3D space creatively and in real-time. The tool was developed using the vvvv toolkit.

Music is an intangible but powerful force.

At HDA, we design architectures and unique objects by informing them with invisible data (structural, lightning and environnemental data). The works and research of Jan Henrik Hansen are interesting to us because they show the use of objective and subjective data as a way to approach art and sculpture as we do in architecture.

The image above is a sculpture from the artist, a portrait of the melody of the song entitled “My Song” by Keith Jarrett.
Visit the artist’s website for more images.

The image above is a shot from the CLIMATE RIBBON™, one of our recent project using data-driven design approach.
Learn more here or watch the video here.
Below is a video in which Jan and Armin give a live demonstration and and briefly explain a demo of the software they use to transform music into sculptures.


While I am writing this, I had an email exchange in which Armins explained to me one of his recent works (above) : for the new identity of the studio, he is doing studies on how to translate letters into each other. More images here.
Looking forward to watch the video of the animated letters!