Catharina Dyrssen is Architect SAR/MSA and musicologist, associate professor/senior lecturer at the Department of Architecture, Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg.
She teaches architectural and urban design, architectural theory and design research methodology, and is in charge of doctoral studies at the department. Earlier employments include architectural design practice and teaching contemporary music at the Academy of Music and Drama, and the Department of Musicology, Göteborg University.
In teaching and research Catharina Dyrssen is especially interested in questions relating architecture to music, sound, rhythm, and the urban sonic environment. She approaches sound as an integrated aspect of architecture when forming urban space and buildings. This involves critical investigations on how concepts of noise and sound are constructed as part of contemporary culture, social patterns and aesthetics. In turn, it leads to reconsidering conceptions of architectural space – questions of scale, spatial borders, centre and periphery, communication, materiality, spatial transgression and occupation, contradictions and correspondences between aural and visual perception etc. She also combines aspects of sound with questions on space and movement, including spatial sequences, bodily movement, and the consequences for urban design of mobility as a dominating, generative force in the contemporary urban landscape.
Within Urban Sound Institute (USIT), Catharina Dyrssen works with architectural and urban issues such as housing and traffic, interfaces between roadscapes and buildings, sound and public space, sound/space theory, spatial conceptualisation etc. She leads design workshops and seminars, and is active as lecturer and in public debates. She is a member of the steering committee of AKAD and coordinator for the USIT research project Transmission.
appearance at Tuned City
design of acoustic environments / 04.07.08