Description:

Echoes is a kinetic ceiling installation that transforms environmental noise into architectural movement. Where architecture typically seeks to control or silence sound, this project asks: What if buildings could listen and respond?
This project repositions noise as a creative material. It challenges the dominance of vision in spatial design by proposing a multi-sensory approach, defined as architectural synaesthesia. In this framework, sound is not background or disturbance, but a primary force in shaping space. Everyday noises: birdsong, wind, traffic, footsteps, etc; are collected, processed, and translated into kinetic form.
The result is Anodos, a kinetic ceiling that rises, falls, and drapes based on sonic input. Constructed from georgette fabric suspended in a timber frame, the movement is driven by 24 actuators controlled via Arduino. Sound is analysed using audio-processing software, broken into frequency data, and then mapped to the motion of individual servos. Though not operating in real time, the system creates a continuous and evolving spatial response.
Anodos turns the traditionally static ceiling into an expressive surface. As it moves, it reshapes the space, alters acoustic behaviour, and shifts how occupants perceive and inhabit the room. Whether standing, sitting, or lying beneath it, viewers experience space as something active and interpretive, something that listens back.
The project draws on a variety of fields: the sonic theories of Luigi Russolo, stochastic processes in the work of Iannis Xenakis, and Güvenç Özel’s concept of cyborg architecture. Through these influences, the ceiling becomes not just a reactive machine but a perceptual device, mixing computation, environment, and embodiment into a single architectural element.
The work is elevated by its refusal to see noise as something to block out. In urban and architectural contexts, sound is often treated as a pollutant. Here, it is reclaimed as content. By letting unpredictable environmental sounds drive movement, Anodos brings a sensory richness into the built environment and invites a shift in how we relate to the spaces around us.
The project has potential applications in public installations, sport and performance venues, hospitality spaces and speculative architecture. In this world we often flattens experience into visual information, this ceiling offers another way of knowing space: through motion, sound, and presence.
Echoes proposes a different kind of architecture; one that listens, adapts, and responds. It imagines a future where buildings aren’t just structures, but sensory instruments, attuned to the rhythms of the world around them.