Wayfinding

“Rhythm is the architecture of being,” wrote Senegalese poet and philosopher Léopold Senghor. Architecture organizes space, while rhythm organizes time, and musicians often speak of our relationship to rhythm in spatial terms: we try to play “in” time but sometimes drag “behind” the rest of the band; we “move” from one tempo to the next and (God forbid) get “lost” when we can’t “find” the downbeat.

“Wayfinding” is a concept in architecture, interior design, and urban planning that refers to the design elements that make built environments knowable and navigable. Fire exit signs, airport maps, color-coded parking structures, and intuitive hotel room numbering make unfamiliar structures intelligible by providing information about how to move through a space and avoid getting lost.

Wayfinding moves through distinct rhythmic spaces, like different rooms in the musical architecture of the piece. Each contains its own wayfinding cues that point toward the next, allowing the music to lose itself without ever quite losing its way. Just as we fill physical spaces with our actions, movements, and memories, the musical spaces within Wayfinding variously evoke joy, anxiety, uncertainty, dreaming, nostalgia, and dancing: beats within the architecture of being.