David Hanawalt & William Close: The Symphonic House

When most people look at a wine tasting pavilion, an office building or a house, they see a collection of rooms. They see a bedroom here, an office there, but when David Hanawalt, a Northern Michigan architect, who honed his style on the buildings of Paris, New York and San Francisco, looks at a building he sees solutions. He sees the needs of his clients answered in the form of what we call, a building. To him they are “organic mixes of spaces grouped in the different ways in which they are used. I see them as a built idea. The idea, is a container of vibrations, whether there are people moving thorough it, or music, or environment, it’s a vibration in the landscape.“ For the Symphonic House, he combined the location and the forces of nature that prevail upon it. He then transformed these forces into musical harmonies, using the house as his resonator. He chose to work with William Close who quite literally uses the Earth as his instrument. William, a Malibu based artist, creates and plays Earth and architectural instruments. He created the Earth harp where he strung eight 1000-foot metal strings across a valley and played them as an instrument. He has done many architectural musical installations around the world. He is always looking for a way “to turn the architecture itself into a musical instrument.“ He transformed the Symphonic House into a gigantic harp that resonates the magical music of the Earth itself. Find out more about the Symphonic House /./), David Hanawalt () and William Close (). Production Just a Guy Named Pete / Director Pete Erickson / Post FishSoup Films / Music William Close