SOUND – What does home sound like? Is
it the same for everyone? And can we take
it with us and make anywhere feel like our
place? Answering those questions at this
year’s Dutch Design Week was an interactive
installation – Space Here Becomes Sound –
developed jointly by Sonos and Studio Lonk
and curated by Frame.
What visitors saw as they wandered
through a set of concentric frames bore
little resemblance at first glance to a warm
homelike interior. Each frame featured one
of the five colours of the Hay Sonos One
Limited Edition Collection. For those who
ventured on to play with the moving parts,
however, each component revealed part of
an overall soundscape: Soft Pink emitted the
sound of heels on the pavement outside the
living-room window; the fast, lush sounds of
Vibrant Red spoke of liveliness within private
spaces; and Light Grey alluded to the metallic
reverberations of bathroom steel. After a few
seconds of sonic adaptation, visitors realized
they could create their own nuanced domes-
tic compositions, based on their personal
ideas of what home sounds like.
‘With today’s nomadic lifestyles, we
spend less and less time in our own homes,
so people feel less sure of what the concept
of home means now. They’re looking for waysCi
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to connect back to a previous ideal,’ says
Studio Lonk’s Celine de Waal Malefijt. ‘We
still clearly value these memories and are
eager to discover new ways to reconnect.’
The installation included an unex-
pected element. The team from Frame
didn’t realize the sounds would create social
alliances at such speed. Lonk’s Anna Dek-
ker describes the scene as ‘an orchestra of
strangers collaborating’. The image was one
of people sharing their thoughts about the
cosiness of private spaces.
The Sonos team saw it coming. ‘You
can enjoy sound by yourself on your head-
phones, but often sound is a social thing,’ says
Cynthia van der Moolen, the audio brand’s
PR manager for the Benelux. ‘If you play music
in the living room, everyone present experi-
ences it simultaneously. Sound can bring us
joy on an individual level, but sharing it with
others actually creates a connection.’
Space Here Becomes Sound was on display at the
Klokgebouw in Eindhoven during the 2018 edition
of Dutch Design Week
studiolonk.nl
sonos.com
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