VARIABLE GEOMETRY ACOUSTICAL DOMES Research and installation at Villa Medici, Rome 2004-2005

Site: Villa Medici, Rome, Italy Client: Villa Medici, French Academy in Rome Size: 130 m2 Cost: 50 000 Euros Design and Concept : David Serero | ITERAE, Scripts and drawings: Yves Ubelmann, Prototype engineer: Luca Bernardi, Acoustician: Christina Aureli

“ … Traditionally, domes are seen as architectural elements, used for the covering of large spaces by accumulation of discrete components. For the last years I worked on designing and engineering prototypes of a new kind of dome, which does not relate to structure but instead to acoustics. In collaboration with a mathematician, an acoustician and a programmer, I have been developing ways to simulate acoustical behavior of space and construct sound-fields which are the projective base of these new domes. Music, both a physical and immaterial phenomenon is here a measuring tool to analyze and draw spaces. Suspended to the ceiling of an existing space, the Acoustical Dome is an experimental device, which geometry allows for a variation of position in space and an adjustment of form to modify the acoustical behavior of the hall. Here, space is not passive to music; it proceeds on an interactive mode where musical composition is imprinted in a form and where the room’s geometry can be modified for each performance, for each public, in real time. It is the type of event, a music concert, a lecture, a song, which inflects the computation, which folds and unfolds the acoustical dome under the vault of this space. The surface’s tessellation and its increasing subdivision affect the number of folds and trigger a reconfiguration of the fields of reverberation and reflection of sound. This project defines architectural form not in a final state, but rather as an ephemeral and variable condition, where the possibility of its transformation is inscribed inside of its geometry. Integrating ornamental patterns with acoustical form, the Acoustical Dome allows for an interaction between volume of a room and music propagation in space. The Dome maintains therefore an open and flexible relationship between music, the spectator and its surrounding environment. “ David Serero