Italian architect and illustrator Federico Babina has devised a series of posters that depict well-known pieces of music as cartoon buildings. The project, Archimusic, explores the relationship between music and architecture, and sees Babina illustrate pieces by JS Bach, Mozart and Phillip Glass as well as jazz legends Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker and John Coltrane.
Babina incorporates extracts of scores in his designs and imagines how the sounds might look as buildings. The Mozart design incorporates the Requiem, JS Bach's portrait is based around the opening of the First Cello Suite and the Philip Glass illustration closely relates to the shape of the score for Morning Passages.
‘Music and architecture are intimately joined by a cosmic connection,’ says Babina. ‘They both are generated by an underlying code, an order revealed by mathematics and geometry.’
‘Reading horizontally gives some basic lines, while reading vertically reveals both harmony and dissonance,’ he explains.
Other well-known songs that turn up in the series include David Bowie’s Space Oddity, The Beatles's Let it Be, Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
‘Try to listen to the architecture,’ Babina suggests. ‘Interpret its musicality and rhythm.’
Visit: federicobabina.com
All pictures: © Federico Babina