DISPLAY_03-KevinRowe_web

DISPLAY Canadian Design
VOLUME 01
ISSUE 03
AUTUMN 2010
Editors and Creative Directors:
Jennifer Kowton and Charlotte Falk
DISPLAY Canadian Design is published quarterly by Display Publications Inc. in
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Printed and bound in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada by Douglas Printing on FSC paper.
Copyright © 2010 Display Publications Inc.
No article may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without
the written permission of the editors. The views and opinions herein do not
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Cover illustration by John James
Logo design by David Ball
Cover and colophon design by Charlotte Falk
special thanks to:

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An Introduction to Rhythmanalysis in Design
by Kevin M. Rowe
photograph by Brett Liljefors
painting and design by
Charlotte Falk
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Rhythm is expressed everywhere in nature, it is the flow
and movement of things all which can be measured. Rhythm
is the symmetry found between sounds and silences, occupied
spaces and unoccupied spaces, formlessness and form, and
between space and time. Furthermore, rhythm expresses
the repetition and recurrence of some thing or motion. We
must understand that repetition and recurrence does not
usic is everywhere; or, perhaps it would be
better to say that rhythm is everywhere.
Rhythm is an essential element of music. Music
is born out of rhythm—it is born out of the
creative act—from the rhythm of the living (and
sometimes nonliving) body of whom or what
creates it. The heartbeat, breath and bodily
movement of the musician, the flapping wings
of the bird who sings, the ebbs and tides of the
ocean, or the creation and erosion of our great
landscapes:
assume the return of the same; on the contrary, repetitions
and recurrence have a strong tie to the concept of difference.
Henri Lefebvre (2004) contends that there is “no rhythm
without repetition in time and in space without reprises,
without returns, in short without measure [mesure]. But there
is no identical absolute repetition indefinitely. Whence the
relation between repetition and difference” (6). He goes on to
make the claim that repetition not only has a relationship with
differences but it has given birth to, and produces differences
(7). This idea of repetition in relation to difference has been
an important theme in modern continental philosophy and
has been tackled by such philosophical greats as Kierkegaard,
Heidegger, Nietzsche, Lacan, Lefebvre, Deleuze et. al..
What importance is understanding all of this to us? Simple:
in order to design, create, and construct great things we need
an understanding, a genuine understanding, of what rhythm
is and how it effects us and our environment. Moreover, we
We, the human-animal, are bound to and surrounded by rhythm.
must come to fully understand arrhythmia—the motions
which perturb natural rhythms—in order to design morally,
pragmatically, and efficaciously. And how might we come
to understand rhythm in such a way? One might study the
rhythmanalysis of the everyday.
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Rhythmanalysis, a term coined by Brasilian philosopher Lucio Alberto Pinheiro dos Santos in his La rhythmanalyse (1931) and later borrowed by the French
philosopher Gaston Bachelard in his La dialectique de la durée (The Dialectic of Duration) (2000, the french text was originally published in 1950), only to
be taken up again and developed as a philosophy or methodology for the analysis of rhythms by the French sociologist, urbanist, and philosopher Henri
Lefebvre in his book, a collection of essays entitled Éléments de rythmanalyse (Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday Life) (2004, the french text was
originally published in 1992). Lefebvre claimed that the rhythmanalytical project proposed to “found a science, a new field of knowledge [savoir]: the
analysis of rhythms; with practical consequences” (2004; 3).
We cannot deny that music and rhythm have nothing to do with the physical and built environment. In fact, they are intricately woven together. Music and
rhythm transverse across several environments physical and abstract. Lefebvre notes that “musical time does not cease to have a relation with the physical
[…] measure has this meaning: a means and not an end, [it is] as it happens that one considers it” (64). Music and rhythm do not only fill space—they
create it. If we to take seriously Le Corbusier’s (1954) claim that “nothing that is built, constructed, divided into lengths, widths or volumes, has yet enjoyed
the advantage of a measure equivalent to that possessed by music, a working tool in the service of musical thought” (16-17), then rhythmanalysis is ever
more important. We can imagine a built environment with practicality and efficacy of movement in mind within the design in Calvino’s city of Zora.
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The city, as Zora Marco Polo describes “...has the quality of remaining in your memory point by point,
in its succession of streets, of houses along the streets, and of doors and windows, though nothing in
them possesses a special beauty or rarity. Zora’s secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns
following one another as in a musical score where not a note can be altered or displaced” (15).
It is through musical thought, and the understanding of rhythm that we can give our designs and
constructs the practicality Lefebvre wished for. This is what we see in the city of Zora, Marco Polo
was wrong—there is beauty and rarity in Zora—the beauty and rarity behind its design, the musical
construction of physical space that Corbusier claims does not yet exist. Zora is a composition
We must take seriously that our designs are influenced by rhythm, and when we give form to them in the construction of things we ought to think of the
rhythms they will effect and become a part of. We must understand design to be an ecological (again ethics) process based on both natural rhythms and
the rhythms of society. We must plan and design the way in which the composer writes his music: to be performed. The question we need ask is in what
way can our designs and plans be most practically performed? The answer may lie in rhythmanalysis.
designed to follow a specific rhythm (through repetition and difference), a rhythm that is memorized
by its citizens like one memorizes a piece of music, and this gives the city its practicality.
Imagine Calvino’s fictional city of Zora as a rhythm composed in a way that its citizens are able to
memorize the entire urban landscape. Now imagine the arrhythmia of your own city. Yes there are
rhythms here too, the rhythms of the passerby you spot from your office window, the rhythm of the
timed street lights, etcetera etcetera. However, lets think larger scale at the rhythm of the city as
a whole, and think of what causes arrhythmia in a city? Many things that might occur spontaneously
cause arrhythmia such as accidents, fires, natural phenomenon and disasters, etc. (much like an
illness in a person). What I would like you to think of is design. On one hand we have rhythm that
is about flow and movement, and on the other hand we have arrhythmia causing dissonance and
conflict. Knowing how to create flow and movement—how to design with rhythm—is what will give a
design practicality.
Practicality has as much to do with ethics as it does utility, and a design must address this before
it takes form. What is this design for? How will it be used? Who will it be used by? All pretty basic
questions for a designer. The nature of rhythmanalysis which parses out social structures their
rhythms and their relation to the production of space to help us see how social space is produced
(Lefebvre claims, in The Production of Space (1999) that, “(social) space is a (social) product” ( 30)
meaning that we actively produce the space around us through our social (and economic) relations).
Rhythmanalysis, then, is also a tool which can help us perceive and prevent arrhythmia (for instance
Works Cited
Bachelard, G. The Dialectic of Duration, Manchester:
Clinamen, 2000.
Le Corbusier. The Modular, London: Faber & Faber, 1954.
Lefebvre, H. The Production of Space, Oxford: Blackwell,
1999.
Lefebvre, H. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time, and Everyday
Life, London: Continuum, 2004.
Pinheiro dos Santos, L. A. La rhythmanalyse, Rio de Janeiro:
Société de Psychologie et de Philosophie,1931.
Lefebvre exposes capitalism for causing arrhythmia in the social and economic sphere (2004; 51-56).
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