when colors suggest sounds...

an image of a page from a 1967 japan architect magazine, featuring the interior color schemes for kyonori kikutake's pacific hotel. ikko tanaka, who devised the room colors writes about an attempt to use color in response to the cylindrical spiral basic forms of the hotel, and to create spaces "totally unlike the ones we daily experience".

tanaka describes the seven basic colors that make up the designs as "rainbow tones" and notes that, other than the wall colors, most of the colored elements can be moved from room to room to create new combinations - making the entire scheme of color combination somewhat modular.

the idea of modularity (shifting harmonic and dissonant relationships), as well as the use of the word "tones" to describe color, had me thinking about these images - these rooms - as potential scores for making sound. of course, the little color coded glockenspiels i used to generate the sound for siza's serpentine pavilion, and which i always have hanging around my studio, make perfect sense with tanaka's sense of color...