Profile

I am an architectural and urban historian specialising in the relationship between sound, architecture, and the built environment. My primary research interests include audiovisual architecture; the sonic archive; twentieth-century experimental music and sound art; urban sound studies; performance histories; critical spatial practice, and the relationship between law, space, and sound. I joined Warwick University in January 2024 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the UKRI-funded project Captive ArtsLink opens in a new window, where I explore questions around the role of arts, creativity, and expression in English prisons. Previously, I was Postdoctoral Fellow on the ERC-funded project SONCITIESLink opens in a new window at Oxford University, having completed my PhD at the Bartlett School of Architecture in 2022 supported by an LAHP studentship award.

I use a range of interdisciplinary and creative practice-informed methods in my work, from walking to model-making, drawing, exhibition, and filmmaking. As an historian I am particularly interested in how sound can be interpreted and applied as a form of ‘live’ architectural knowledge. My doctoral thesis explored the histories of audiovisual architecture since 1950, specifically the work of architect and composer Iannis Xenakis. Since then, I have been studying sound’s role in politics of belonging and exclusion in contemporary cities. My most recent work investigates socio-legal perspectives of sound in urban areas characterised by high degrees of difference, focusing on notions of acoustic welfare in the context of UK justice systems.

Outside of my role at Warwick I co-lead the proj/ect Performing Spatial Evidence / Evidencing Spatial Performance with architectural historian Dr. Sophie Read (UCL), and I am part of the advisory team for An Architecture of Chronic Illness, led by Dr Anna Andersen (NTNU).

Selected Publications/Films:

2021 Bernatek, R. ‘Sound Making Space: the audiovisual architecture of the Polytope de Montréal (1967) and the Polytope de Mycenae (1978) by Iannis Xenakis’. (Doctoral DissertationLink opens in a new window), UCL (University College London).

2018 R. Bernatek & A.U. Andersen, X Earwitness (2018) HDV 10:00 (English & Greek). This short film can be viewed here: X / EARWITNESS – Anna Ulrikke AndersenLink opens in a new window

2018 Bernatek, R. ‘Optophono: the record conceived as a meeting point between sonic imaginations’, in Sound Studies, 4:2, 227-233, DOI: 10.1080/20551940.2019.1579428Link opens in a new window

2018 Bernatek, R. ‘The sound of spectacle: Xenakis and the Montreal world’s fair’, in Architecture and Culture, 6:3, 485-498, DOI: 10.1080/20507828.2018.1533354Link opens in a new window