Arvo Pärt Centre & Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos
Michael Pärt (Editor)
ArchiTangle, February 2021Hardcover | 11-1/4 x 11-1/4 inches | 212 pages | 110 illustrations | English + Estonian (plus booklet with German + Spanish translations) | ISBN: 978-3966800037 | $68.00
PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION:
The book embodies a bridge between the dimensions of music, architecture and landscape: the music of Arvo Pärt with the architecture of Fuensanta Nieto and Enrique Sobejano in the surrounding pine forest landscape in Laulasmaa, Estonia, to form one infused entity.
This book is many books. The first takes the reader on a journey throughout the spaces within the Arvo Pärt Centre. The second is a book of words. It reveals quotations from Arvo Pärt’s musical diaries. The third book embraces us with score elements turning into architecture elements. The fourth book is an architecture sketchbook. It contains a graphical description of the whole project from an architectural view. Plans, sections, elevations, structural schemes of the landscape project, the main building, and the tower and the chapel show technical details and proportions of the spaces. Finally, the fifth book provides a deeper view on the synthesis of the arts through the words of five authors: Michael Pärt, Fuensanta Nieto & Enrique Sobejano, Kristina Kõrver, Nikita Andrejev and Covadonga Blasco Veganzones.
Arvo Pärt (born 11 September 1935) is an Estonian composer of classical music, whose compositions are mostly based on Christian texts. From 2011 to 2018, Pärt was the most performed living composer in the world. The Arvo Pärt Centre, in Laulasmaa, was opened to the public in 2018. Fuensanta Nieto has worked as an architect since graduating from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University in New York in 1983. She is a founding partner, with Enrique Sobejano, of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos and a professor at the Universidad Europea de Madrid. Enrique Sobejano has worked as an architect since graduating from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia University in New York in 1983. He is professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he holds the chair of Principles of Design.
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dDAB COMMENTARY:
One of the project categories — or filters — on the website of Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos is "roofscape" (the others are light, material, landscape, geometry, and history). One of the eight projects in that category is the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa, Estonia, the subject of a new book. The building shares formal similarities with some of the other roofscapes, namely the piercing lightwells of the earlier Joanneumsviertel in Graz, Austria, and the Contemporary Art Center in Córdoba, Spain. As depicted in the aerial on the cover of the new book-length case study, the cuts in the roof are the Arvo Pärt Centre's most striking aspect, at least outside of the heavily wooded site near Lahepere Bay.
No building is just its form, its architecture. Accordingly, this book is presented as five books in one: a book of photographs, a book of draft and scores of composer Arvo Pärt's "In Principio," a book of quotes, a book of architectural drawings, and a book of essays. Of course, A Common Denominator is a single bound book (only a booklet with German and Spanish translations of the text is separate), but the design and layout of its 212 large-format pages draws attention to the multiplicity of its contents and gives the "five-book" book a noticeable rhythm, as in the spreads below.
The book starts simply with a quote from Pärt: "I could compare my music to white light which contains all colors. Only a prism can divide the colors and make them appear; this prism could be the spirit of the listener." Empty musical staffs are on the following page, next to four sheets of vellum with dots, lines, and other drawings that start to express the building devoted to the Estonian composer. The drawings on these sheets, as visible in the first spread below, overlay the staffs and express an interaction of music and architecture. These two "books" — of "In Principio" and of architectural drawings — are found six more times in the book, situated between the photographs, quotes, and essays of the other "books."
Just as the initial quote by Pärt puts great weight on "the spirit of the listener," the short essays, un-captioned photos, and layering of drawings across musical notation do the same, but for the reader. This is not a building monograph that tries to explain everything. Rather it leisurely presents the building in words and images, inviting the reader to get from it what they put into it. The ideal audience would have already visited the Arvo Pärt Centre, but for me, who has never set foot on Estonian soil, the book is a strong invitation to see the building in person, hear Pärt's music fill its spaces, and take in the beautiful landscape beyond the roofscape.
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