Archinect - News

Iconic Parisian cathedral transformed into ‘sensory nighttime exploration’ by multimedia company Moment Factory

2023-10-26T12:53:00-04:00

Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to celebrate the building’s architectural and historical heritage.

Image credit: Moment Factory

Conceived in 2019 by cultural operator Cultival in collaboration with Musée de l’Armée, the project seeks to create a “sensory nighttime exploration” in which visitors wander through the Dôme des Invalides and its six chapels guided by light. The experience is divided into three acts, each portraying a distinct facet of the site: “its construction, the memories it harbors, and its power to inspire one and all.”

Image credit: Moment Factory

To project an experience onto the main dome, which measures 295 feet high and 98 feet at its smallest diameter, the t...

Go inside The Shed’s short-lived Sonic Sphere installation with The New York Times

2023-07-06T17:26:00-04:00

“It’s about a change in consciousness that leaves a memory,” [Ed] Cooke said of the project. “Can people have an experience where they touch some new territory of consciousness, not in a way that is like an altered state, but one that actually leaves a trace?”

The 50-ton space, which is suspended some 34 feet above the ground, has a capacity of 250 people and was promoted by co-designer Merijn Royaards as a “sensory laboratory that [...] bends time, expands consciousness, and punctures our perception of reality” at the project’s announcement in early May.

Video courtesy of The Shed/YouTube

Its design was supposedly inspired by German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Kugelauditorium from 1970 and includes a JBL sound system for special 45-minute ticketed performances. The venue closes on July 30th, with a return to New York planned for next year. Speaking of their intent for the $2 million project, Royaards' colleague Ed Cooke told the Times, “We want to give [people] something magical.”

The Shed debuts Sonic Sphere suspended musical feature

2023-05-09T13:17:00-04:00

The Shed at New York City’s Hudson Yards has unveiled plans for a new, temporary 65-foot spherical concert hall feature to be placed inside the arts venue’s McCourt performance space this summer.

The space is the product of architectural designers Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards, and Nicholas Christie and has previously been enacted at the 2022 Burning Man festival and ten other venues.

Lounge-type seating is combined with a listening platform that's suspended 34 feet off the ground. Standing sections and a netted center complete the spatial design, with a capacity for 250 persons, a JBL sound system, and lighting design from Polina Zakh. The space was supposedly inspired by Karlheinz Stockhausen’s 1970 Kugelauditorium for the World Expo in Japan that same year.

Royaards explains: “My first experience of clubbing was during a cold winter in early ’90s Rotterdam. The interference patterns of visual, sonic, and kinetic waveform transmissions that flooded the dance floor and enveloped me we...

OPEN Architecture's new performance venue offers us a study in acoustical petrology

2021-12-01T15:04:00-05:00

A fascinating addition to the Chinese cultural program has come online this week with the completion of OPEN Architecture’s Chapel of Sound in Chengde, Hebei Province.

Overlooking the ruins of one of China’s most important historic sites, the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall, the concert hall is made entirely of concrete and enriched with an admixture of minerally-heavy local rocks, encasing a semi-outdoor amphitheater, viewing platform, green room, and outdoor stage. A striated envelope is formed via a series of staggered cantilevers which rise from the rocks below to create an organic-looking profile its designers say is in perfect harmony with the surrounding landscape and sky above.

Inside the building, a slate of winding staircases meanders their way through the structure leading up to the rooftop which offers dynamic views of the valley and the nearby Great Wall.

The building’s form is derived principally from the outsized value the arc...

This conceptual sound installation will let San Franciscans “hear” the sinking Millennium Tower

2019-11-15T15:42:00-05:00

Creating a work about the sinking high-rise was an easy choice, according to Martínez. “We started researching San Francisco, and current events in the city, and the Millennium Tower popped up,” Martínez said. “We knew almost instantly we wanted to do a project that was in some way going to connect with some of most expensive real estate on earth collapsing under the weight of itself as a metaphor for late capitalism.”

Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist of interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity were compelled to make an art piece based on the sinking, tilting Handel Architects-designed Millennium Tower in San Francisco, as a timely metaphor for late capitalism collapsing under the weight of itself. The duo made a data map of the tower's minuscule movements and created a conceptual sound-art piece called “The Point of Final Collapse.”

Starting today, the piece will be played for 4 minutes at 5 p.m. from the tower at San Francisco Art Institute's campus on North Beach, and projected to Downtown San Francisco via long-range acoustic devices. The piece will play every day until the tower is fixed or torn down, the artists say in the article.

This new 'acoustic metamaterial' can cancel the sounds of anything—without blocking airflow

2019-03-11T14:16:00-04:00

A team of Boston University researchers recently stuck a loudspeaker into one end of a PVC pipe. They cranked it up loud. What did they hear? Nothing. How was this possible? Did they block the other end of the pipe with noise canceling foams or a chunk of concrete? No, nothing of the sort. The pipe was actually left open save for a small, 3D-printed ring placed around the rim. That ring cut 94% of the sound blasting from the speaker, enough to make it inaudible to the human ear.

"The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from," explain the Boston University researchers behind the discovery: Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. "Inside the outer ring, a helical pattern interferes with sounds, blocking them from transmitting through the open center while preserving air's ability to flow through."

Precisely this capacity of maintaining airflow and enabling light to shine through while muting nearly all of the noise opens up a vast field of practical applications, including architectural.

Acoustic architecture and the geometry of "focalizers"

2017-11-30T12:41:00-05:00

Entering into a new space means stepping into a new acoustic arena. Whether subconscious or at the forefront of our attention, the way sound resonates in a built environment is part of a crafted experience influencing how people relate to a space. The presence of a circle or semi circle in architecture produces a specific phenomena which many encounter in passing. When an individual passes through the exact center of a dome their own voice is reflected back to them louder than any other sound in the present environment.

Classified by some as “focalizers”, these instances occur predominantly in cathedrals or capital domes. Where some may simply pass through, others seek out this center point to experience their own private arena of sound. The acoustical reflection is immediate, clear, and amplified above any other surrounding noise.

Whispering Gallery in Grand Central Terminal.

A related phenomenon is the "whispering wall", which occurs along a curved surface carrying even the slig...

How algorithms designed the sound of the new Hamburg concert hall

2017-08-30T18:30:00-04:00

Detached from the rest of the building for soundproofing reasons, the 10,000 panels that line the central auditorium are the result of parametric design, a process of creating multiple individual designs using algorithms. A million individual cells ranging from four to 16cm long are cut out from the panels [...] The ivory coloured gypsum fiber acoustic panels contain a seashell motif and were designed by Swiss architect Herzog & De Meuron with help from German studio One to One.

Interior view of the central concert hall. Photo: Iwan Baan.

"It would be insane to do this by hand," GCR quotes Benjamin Koren, founder of One to One, the studio that created the design algorithm for the concert hall's acoustic panels. "That’s the power of parametric design. I hit play, and it creates a million cells, all different and all based on these parameters. I have 100% control over setting up the algorithm, and then I have no more control.”

Photo: Johannes Arlt

Cavalry 360° imitates forgotten sounds amidst quintessential English landscape

2017-08-26T04:00:00-04:00

Last month, Cavalry 360°, a vast site-specific musical instrument designed by NEON opened on the banks of the North Tyne, UK. The structure uses the force of 32 wind turbines to create an ever-changing sound of the cavalry moving across the landscape—horse’s hooves hitting the ground.

Arranged in a circular form to allow people to step into the work, Cavalry 360° measures 3.5 meters high and 12 meters across. In the setting of a quintessential English landscape, the work seeks to connect the visitor to the place's long history, manifested in the preserved walls of the Roman cavalry fort. The constantly altering in direction and rhythm sound is created by beaters, the number of which represents the 500 horse that used to inhabit the site.

Photography: Lightly Frozen / English Heritage / Anthony Chappel-Ross.

Kevin Booth, Senior Curator at English Heritage, noted, "It is designed to connect the viewer with the environment, to invite people to look through the work at the landscape bey...

“You miss it when it’s gone”: On New Yorkers' addiction to noise

2016-08-02T14:28:00-04:00

To live in New York means to get habituated to the noise of everyday life here...As a neighborhood becomes more homogenous, and its residents sync their noise patterns, noise complaints tend to go down. This may explain why, controlling for other factors, gentrifying areas of the city display higher levels of noise complaints. City residents stop consciously recognizing noise as novel, and it becomes background, even if their bodies don’t always recognize it as such.

“We all love to hate the noise. And yet sitting in silence, I do not feel as if I’ve found an escape from pain: I have simply traded it for a new variety. Shockingly, I realize I want to trade back.”

Writer Susie Neilson delves into the pros and cons of urban noise pollution, a truly defining factor of living in NYC.

The Art of Architecture Criticism: Archinect Sessions One-to-One #7 with Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times

2016-01-18T17:27:00-05:00

Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, joins me for our first One-to-One interview of 2016. I wanted to talk with Kimmelman specifically about a piece he had published just at the end of last year, called “Dear Architects: Sound Matters”. The piece considers how an architectural space’s unique audio atmosphere helps create its overall personality, invariably affecting us as we experience it. Alongside Kimmelman’s writing in the piece are looped videos of different spaces – an office at the New York Times, a restaurant, the High Line, Penn Station, a penthouse – meant to be viewed while wearing headphones, to get to know that space’s sonic portrait, of sorts.

Too often, says Kimmelman, architects don’t think of sound as a material like they would concrete, glass or wood, when it can have a profound effect on the design’s overall impact. In our interview, Kimmelman shares how the piece came to be, and how it fits into the Times’ overall push into more multimedia...

For nebulous decibel numbers, the Silent Treatment

2016-01-06T01:00:00-05:00

The primary strategy for blocking airborne sound is to add a layer of dense, flexible material to the problem surface...Stopping vibration-borne noise is usually trickier and more expensive. It requires suspending walls, ceilings or floors so that the vibrations aren’t conducted to a building’s framing, which can transmit sound throughout a building...A compounding issue is that it takes only a very small gap to let in a lot of sound.

Roy Furchgoff surveys the noise-control industry, which at least anecdotally in New York is growing.

Related and recently, architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and producers Alicia DeSantis, Jon Huang and Graham Roberts documented the sounds of some archetypal NYC spaces.

Take a listen to the NYT's beautiful sonic portraits of architectural spaces

2015-12-29T17:45:00-05:00

we rarely talk about how architecture sounds, aside from when a building or room is noisy. [...] Sound may be invisible or only unconsciously perceived, but that doesn’t make it any less an architectural material than wood, glass, concrete, stone or light. [...] Acoustics can act in deep, visceral ways, not unlike music ... And while it’s sometimes hard to pin down exactly how, there is often a correlation between the function of a place or an object and the sound we expect it to make.

Architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and producers Alicia DeSantis, Jon Huang and Graham Roberts document the sounds of some archetypal city spaces, conveying the personality and subtle (or sometimes not) musicality of interiors.

Create sonic architecture with mesh, music, and lights at the New Museum this weekend

2015-08-06T14:50:00-04:00

Museum displays are typically meant to be seen and not touched, but a recent wave of exhibitions is upending those rules. Take DELQA, an interactive music and light installation opening in the New Museum's NEW INC space on August 6. Showcasing the music of Matthew Dear combined with Microsoft's Kinect technology, the project allows participants to touch, push and poke suspended mesh walls to manipulate a musical composition, creating their own unique experience of the space.

If you're on the hunt for weekend plans in NYC, DELQA will be at the New Museum only from August 6-9!

The Same Song Sung in 15 Places

2015-07-21T23:23:00-04:00

Müllner demonstrates how much environment contributes to the quality of what we hear...As slick as an advertisement, the short video uses a heavily mediated form to convey the simple idea of natural reverberation...The ways in which sound and space interact can determine the shape of a musical form.

Inspired by a video from the Wikisinger, Josh Jones reflects on the relationship between landscape, cityscape, architectural formation and the sounds of music.

h/t @Nick Sowers

"Soundscape New York" captures the sounds of NYC's iconic buildings

2015-03-18T14:13:00-04:00

Karen Van Lengen, who created the installation with her husband, James Welty, says to really soak in a building, you need to listen to it. 'If you close your eyes, what you're going to hear are things that you can't hear with your eyes open,' says Van Lengen, an architecture professor at the University of Virginia.

You can also find more about the exhibition on Bustler.

The boolean-created “Situation Room” at the Storefront for Art + Architecture

2014-10-15T19:44:00-04:00

Immersed in a neon bubblegum pink shell, walking through the Situation Room gives viewers a fascinating perspective of the digital and physical environments. Designed by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY in collaboration with sound artist Jana Winderen, the installation was created by 20 spheres of various sizes fused by boolean operations. Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC commissioned the project for the WorldWide Storefront initiative launch.

Here's a sneak peek of the installation:

INsite by Luftwerk turns Mies' Farnsworth House inside-out with light and sound

2014-05-15T13:23:00-04:00

Whether you're a diehard Miesian fan or could care less about the modernist architecture canon, we've heard of ol' Farnsworth time and time again since its completion in 1951 in Plano, Illinois. But Chicago-based artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero of Luftwerk want the public to see the historic Farnsworth House in a whole new light — literally — with their digital installation project called INsite.

INsite highlights the house's characteristic clean lines through site-specific digital video projections and original music compositions, thus rendering it into a new structure of light, sound, and space. In addition to recent preservation efforts to protect the Farnsworth from more floodwater damage in the future, INsite could help revive public interest in an eye-catching way that is suitable for these tech-friendly times.

Illuminating modern architecture landmarks is nothing new for Gallero and Bachmaier, who have collaborated with video designer and programmer Liviu Pasare and co...

Exhibition recap: Instruments: Reimaging the Music Room

2014-04-18T20:46:00-04:00

“Instruments: Reimaging the Music Room” is a fascinating exhibition of student work from the Piet Zwart Institute’s Master Interior Architecture & Retail Design program, studying the role of sound in the domestic space. Each work creates a physical manifestation, or conduit, of the soundscapes that pervade our most private spaces, either raucously or imperceptibly.

Find more info, photos and videos by visiting the news listing on Bustler...

What will our cities sound like in the future?

2014-03-24T14:18:00-04:00

In a world where we are increasingly given the chance to customise our output, how do you orchestrate a planet where a Gangnam ringtone collides with the sound of a 1970s camera shutter from a smartphone, in a tube station resonating with Vivaldi to deter loitering, while the guy next to you shout-announces to some remotely interested party that he is "About to get on the tube! I said The! Tube! ... "? What is the future sound of cities?

Audiotopie awarded the Phyllis Lambert Design Montréal Grant 2013

2013-12-11T19:11:00-05:00

Audiotopie was awarded $10,000 from the 2013 Phyllis Lambert Design Montreal Grant in Montreal, Canada earlier this week. Established in 2007, the annual grant distinguishes young, emerging Montreal designers who have shown excellence in their work and research study that can contribute to the city of Montreal.

"The $10,000 grant will enable the Audiotopie team, which designs immersive sound works closely connected to physical spaces through creation of sensory experiences, to go on a study trip during which its members will compare sound environments in the underground spaces of three Asian cities."

Master acoustician, Yasuhisa Toyota, talks about kickstarting his career with the Disney Concert Hall

2013-09-20T14:59:00-04:00

"Our collaboration has been since 1989, and now it's long-term," Toyota says of Gehry. "With Frank, I learned many, many things." Chief among them, he says: "Flexibility." "His thinking is very free and without restrictions. His spirit and creative mind is [open]. And we were able to work together in this way," Toyota says. During the construction of Disney Hall, Toyota, ... was inspired by Gehry's design and perfected what he sees as his personal style of acoustics.

Long Beach officials top 600-foot-long 'Great Wall of Mulch'

2013-08-08T13:36:00-04:00

It is, first and foremost, a visual and sound buffer placed between residents and the diesel trucks rumbling along the 103 Freeway to and from the Port of Long Beach. But the wall, two fences stuffed with mulch generated from Long Beach tree trimmings, is also environmentally friendly; it will eventually be seeded with trees and shrubs that will leech vehicle exhaust from the air and transform the pollution into oxygen.

Microphone system maps rooms with a snap of the fingers

2013-06-21T19:15:00-04:00

Creating a 3D map of a room could someday be as simple as randomly placing four microphones within the space, then snapping your fingers. Researchers from Switzerland’s EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne/Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) have recently done so on a limited scale, and are now excited about the technology’s possible applications.

Frank Gehry says new subway could be 'disaster' for Disney Hall

2013-05-28T13:34:00-04:00

Frank Gehry has raised concerns that concerts at his Disney Hall in Los Angeles could be ruined by a planned subway line that would run close to the venue. Recent simulations suggest rumbling might be audible in the concert hall. These have provoked the architect to call for the Metro’s own noise projections, which two years ago predicted there would be no audible impact, to be reviewed.

Zimoun: 318 prepared dc-motors, cork balls, cardboard boxes 100x100x100cm

2013-05-06T14:17:00-04:00

If you're in Berlin this May, make sure to swing by the Opernwerkstätten Berlin: Swiss artist, Zimoun, known for his "architecturally-minded platforms of sound," exhibits 318 prepared dc-motors, cork balls, cardboard boxes 100x100x100cm, one of the artist's two current European exhibitions. The piece will be on view until May 24th.

Hearing the Future of Architecture

2012-10-23T12:01:00-04:00

Last week, Raj Patel, principal and acoustic consultant at Arup treated the crowd at Yale School of Architecture’s Sound of Architecture Symposium to a presentation on his company’s Sound Lab. The Sound Lab uses a battery of speakers arranged in a spherical configuration to mimic the acoustic properties of a digital architectural model. In real time, designers can change the shape of a hall, the material of the seats, the angle of the walls, and hear how it might affect the acoustics...

Squarepusher and the Geometry of Sound

2012-10-14T23:16:00-04:00

Taking Kubrick’s 2001: Space Odyssey as an inspiration for the mood of the Sound Portal, Arup created an intimidating black rubber shape that sits in the centre of Trafalgar Square but opens up to reveal light and sky within. The facility provides the perfect environment for some of the most thoughtful and innovative recording artists in the world, including one of my favourite Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher I spoke to him about using ambisonic arrays and exploring sound in three dimensions.

Sound of Buildings

2012-07-27T20:11:00-04:00

The Sound of Buildings is an audio exploration of Melbourne’s most architecturally significant buildings. Available free as an interactive iPhone and iPad app, The Sound of Buildings provides listeners with a deeper level of understanding and context for the selected buildings, as well highlighting Melbourne’s diverse architecture and urban spaces through an exploration of cultural, monuments, government, residential, commercial, transport, education, health and sporting projects.

High-tech system lets restaurant set noise level

2012-05-14T14:51:00-04:00

So Paluska and Meyer Sound, a world-renowned audio engineering company in Berkeley, teamed up to test a relatively new technology that controls reverberation levels with the press of a button. By using a combination of sound absorption materials, microphones, speakers and a digital processor, Paluska can make his restaurant as loud or as soft as he wants.