Draft:Emma Kate Matthews

Emma-Kate Matthews is a British architect, composer, musician, and researcher. Her interdisciplinary work explores the intersections between sonic and spatial practices, producing site-responsive and spatialised audiovisual projects. Matthews' practice draws upon her training in both architecture and music, using one discipline to inform and expand the other.

Career

Matthews studied architecture and music, developing a creative methodology that fuses elements of sound and space in the same project. She often uses her architectural knowledge to inform compositional structure, spatial acoustics, and site-specific installations. Her practice centres on investigating the resonances between physical and sonic structures, producing works that respond dynamically to architectural environments. She aims for her work to encourage others to explore the connections between sonic and spatial practices, with a particular focus on identifying reciprocities between the acts of constructing sound and constructing space.

In addition to her creative practice, Matthews is an active researcher. She is the lead editor of The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space, a major academic volume that brings together interdisciplinary studies in architecture, acoustics, and music. Her research interests include spatial audio, digital fabrication, endangered languages, and the heritage crafts of instrument making — particularly the role of digital technologies in the traditional art of bellfounding, explored through her exhibition Sounds and Silence at Make Southwest gallery in Devon, UK. This exhibition features a number of digitally modelled "resonant bodies" (experimental musical instruments) that also feature in works nominated for the Aesthetica Art Prize in 2022.

Matthews has contributed to research at University College London, where she has worked on projects exploring the use of 3D printing to document and preserve endangered languages.

In a 2025 interview for Monocle magazine's On Design radio show, she introduced a self-coined term "Spatiosonic" to describe a space between music and architecture, reflecting the conceptual territory in which her work is situated.

Musical Work

Matthews' compositions have been performed internationally and have attracted critical attention for their complex layering of sonic materials and spatial arrangements. Her work is described as blending "Spare and intense... more about timbre and texture than pitch".

In interviews, she has discussed how material and environmental properties influence her compositional decisions.

She cites American classical composer Henry Brant as a key influence in her work.

She has released music with electronic musician Matthew Herbert's label Accidental Records, contributing to compilations such as Composed with Sound Pt. 1, which showcases experimental approaches to composition using environmental sounds and Antechamber Music 3.

Her work was highly commended in the Sound of the Year Awards for two consecutive years in the Composed With Sound and Most Unpleasant Sound categories.

Her music often integrates architectural concepts, aiming to unlock the ‘architecture of music’ by considering sonic and spatial structures as a single continuum. In interviews, she has discussed her creative processes, describing how material, architectural and environmental properties influence her compositional decisions.

Selected Exhibitions and Projects

• In 2025, Matthews was part of Sound and Silence at Make Southwest, an exhibition that combined digital fabrication with heritage craft and bell-making traditions. Through sound and sculpture, the project explored how contemporary technologies can engage with historical forms of making, highlighting the continuity between past and future craft practices.
• She was lead editor and contributor to The Routledge Companion to the Sound of Space (2024), a comprehensive academic volume examining spatial sound practices across disciplines such as architecture, music, acoustics, philosophy, psychology, politics, physiology, and sound art. Co-edited by architects Mark Burry and Jane Burry.
• As part of her research at University College London, Matthews collaborated on a project using 3D printing to create visual artefacts representing endangered languages, integrating methods from design, linguistics, and digital fabrication to support language preservation and cultural memory.