Living with Music
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Field Trip is design academia and culture explored through research, literature and creative practice.
[RESEARCH ©FT]
One of my favourite things is the co-existence of design and music and how they continually inform one another. I spent this week looking at living spaces that encapsulate my design+music+interior dreams.
[01]
Rick Rubin’s home in Malibu, California
A house I saw a while ago and fell in love with is Rick Rubin’s Malibu home which features a speaker system in almost every room so he can listen to music wherever he is in the house. Rubin worked with architects Enrico Bonetti and Dominic Kozerski to redesign the Tudor-style home, situated minutes from the famous Shangri-La recording studio. Bonetti describes the space as “a three-dimensional exercise in meditation” the ultimate intention being the removal of distractions in order to encourage the creative process.
“One of the greatest rewards of making art is our ability to share it. Even if there is no audience to receive it, we build the muscle of making something and putting it out into the world. Finishing our work is a good habit to develop. It boosts confidence. Despite our insecurities, the more times we can bring ourselves to release our work, the less weight insecurity has.”
― RICK RUBIN, THE CREATIVE ACT: A WAY OF BEING
[02]
Alexandra Dröner’s Berlin Apartment
Sitting amongst a collection of midcentury furniture is a stereo, the focal point of DJ Alexandra Dröner’s Apartment. “It’s a temple to me, a wonderful music shrine. I want to be able to sit down or stand in the most ideal position possible and listen to music,” she says. “For me, that’s how music should be experienced at home—as a singular experience and not as background noise.”
Dröner believes if you have experienced the synergy created when sound and space converge, then it will never leave you: “This old ruin, its walls, the steel, the stroboscopes, the tangible sound and how it dripped from the ceiling. It was like art.” Dröner is interested in the art of listening, turning her entire apartment into a large sound installation. “You can play an ambient record on the smart bathroom radio or place other soundscapes and sources on monitors and stereo, so you can wander around the apartment and something interesting always happens.”
[03]
Devon Turnball’s Brooklyn Brownstone
I came across Devon Turnbull recently on instagram and was instantly drawn to the design of his Ojas speakers and in awe when I saw his listening room. After an extensive remodelling of a historic brownstone in Clinton Hill, Turnbull’s home reflects his love of Danish and Japanese aesthetics and his studio on the third floor is where he creates and tests his custom-designed hi-fi speakers.
“I want to create a hi-fi for the people,” he says. The first step toward that goal will be to create more free, public listening rooms. Turnbull sees museums and galleries as the best opportunity to make that happen. “Music deserves these spaces,” he says. “I don’t think there should be just one, I think there should be a lot of them. I think it’s so unfortunately rare these days for people to have even a good stereo system to listen to stuff on.”
[REFERENCES ©FT 24.02.23]
What I read:
What I listened To:
BEST PRODUCTION ©FT – songs that are (imo) impeccably produced
Living with Music
great article lauren !!! amazing photos too. always always always thinking about music and listening spaces and the look of all of it 😪😪 hope to have a gorgeous listening station one day soon