polish pavilion: making the walls quake at the architecture biennale 2012

‘making the walls quake’ distorted walls in the polish pavilion at the 2012 venice architecture biennale image © designboom

venice 2012 architecture biennale: day four – live!

curator michal libera in collaboration with artist katarzyna krakowiak, sound designer ralf meinz and acoustical engineer andrsej klosak have designed this year’s honorable mention winner, the polish pavilion, in the giardini of the venice biennale. in the exhibit, architecture is approached from the perspective of sound, which is an innate building material to any space. walls, floors and ceilings are not treated as physical elements that organize spaces, but rather as acoustic components that control the quality and amplitude of natural tones.

the acoustically soundproof entrance vestibule aurally removes the visitor from the exterior and creates a blank audible slate to be filled within the following volumes. in a carefully designed series of empty halls, a fortunate acoustic discovery led to the installation of ventilation shafts on the roof that apart from maintaining a comfortable interior temperature, also capture all the surrounding sounds of the giardini and neighboring pavilions and direct them directly into the space. a very high coefficient of reverberation was found to exist within the rooms, making human conversations very difficult, as words would be blurred into one undefinable noise. a slight taper of the partitions creates an angled playground for sound to bounce off of, together with the 50 individual speakers set up around the floors projecting ambient sounds, creates a profound environment for the user to experience architecture as sound.

entrance to side hall

image © designboom

plastered walls and wood floor

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side hall

image © designboom

main hall image © designboom

black vents funnel external sounds and concentrates them in the interior, under a longitudinal skylight

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floor plan / level 0 image courtesy of katarzyna krakowiak and michal libera

simulation of wave propagation image © katarzyna krakowiak

simulation of wave propagation image © katarzyna krakowiak

soundscapes in the interior video © designboom