If you listen hard enough, you can almost see it. Before you take in the space with your eyes, you know it. Not the details perhaps, but the space itself. From the most intimate study, musty with the thousands of aged pages upon its shelves to the largest train station, ballpark or library echoing with the feet of the thousands of travelers, the cheers of the thousands of excited fans, the hushed whispers of the thousands of intent students, space sounds. Similar among venues, to be sure, but certainly unique from place to place, this sound is as much a part of the spatial experience as the visual and tactile sense of a place.

Imagine the Pantheon. Its aged marble floor, its coffered concrete ceiling, its echo? Think about Grand Central Station, the low rumbling din of voices, footsteps and trains. In such vast spaces, sound becomes one of the few elements that you can perceive all at once, rather than in bits and fragments. You hear the whole space, while you can only see or touch a very small piece at any given time. Without their sounds, would these great spaces be quite so great?

So listen:

The door squeaks open after a good tug on its tired hinges. Warm air rushes out to greet you, taking with it the sting of a cold March evening. Above, you hear laughter, voices raised in deep camaraderie. A loud crash rolls through you like thunder. The beige carpet is stained and bootworn; tonight it squishes with the melting snow. Up four stairs and to the right, you arrive at the counter. The pale blue formica is faded with years of cleaning, thousands of bottles of spray Lysol. Somewhere to the left, another crash ripples around the room.

Norwood Lanes. Friday Night. The place looks as if it hasn’t changed since the 1950s. The sounds were likely the same then, too. If space sounds, no place sounds quite like this. From where you stand at the counter, sixteen lanes of candlepin bowling stretch out to either side – the balls are bocceball sized, the pins tall and thin. The blue gutters are as worn as the countertop, and the maple lanes glisten in their aged perfection. Rows of black and burgundy balls line the oak wainscoting of the rear wall near the counter and bar. Close your eyes and you can see it.

Someone throws a ball. It hits the lane with a thud, and in those few seconds, in that brief interval that marks the ball’s journey, you can hear the space unroll around you. Think about what that sixtythree feet sounds like, as the ball strikes pins with a crash that locates you, like sonar, precisely in the room. A shout of excitement – or is it disappointment? – erupts from somewhere nearby. To the left and right, lanes One and Sixteen are louder than the rest. The adjacent brick walls seem to amplify the sound and create an acoustic boundary. But this room is just a box. Its ceiling alone is articulated in a vain attempt to reduce some of the echo. Imagine bowling on perpendicular lanes, or lanes at varying angles. What would that space sound like?

If you listen hard enough, any space will gladly tell you volumes. The sounds you hear help to ground you in addition to suggesting a mood, or heightening awareness. It is in these sounds, as much as in the walls and the columns and the materials, that we experience a place. Some places you go to hear things – the cinema, the theater – and all places you go sound unique; but where else except at a bowling alley is sound such an omniscient storyteller, weaving tales of space alongside tales of enduring friendship, terrible tragedy and intense triumph?

Listen. See It?

Yale University
Writing On Architecture
Carter Wiseman