Preservation of Silence is an interdisciplinary project, which combines sound art, experimental architecture, acoustic ecology and social engineering. The concept of it is to preserve the quiet places in urban environments by building a special structures, which should make the quiet spot even more silent by reflecting outside noise and absorbing sound from inside. The aim of this project is to bring attention to new types of cultural practices in a big city and to look at the topic of «silence» from a different angle. The concept, which was funded by the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and BMW, has taken a decade to develop, while the structure itself is made entirely from partially or fully biodegradable materials. The author of the concept is a sound artist — Sergey Kasich.

The principles of the structures are: no roof, no doors; weather and vandal proof; outside noise reflection; inside noise absorption. The construction of the object is multi-layered: the outer layer is smooth, it reflects sound waves, while the internal surfaces absorb and diffuse them at the same time. The sound impulse gets into the pyramids-diffusers, breaks into parts and gets «stuck» in them. After getting into the holes, waves are completely absorbed. Between the outer and the inner walls there is a natural sound-absorbing material. In addition to the utilitarian function, perforation also carries information about the sound landscape of the place, which was fixed before the installation had been built. The sound wave was transformed into the binary code, in which 0 became a hole of a smaller diameter and 1 of a larger one. This code can be read by a program, so we can observe changes in the sound environment after time. This is another reading of the preserving silence idea. Authors welcome any kind of activity inside the pavilion. No permission or agreement is needed for this, as long as the activity keeps within the existing legislation and the park rules.

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Details

Architecture : CXEMA

Project artist/ concept/ design/ planning : Sergey Kasich

Structural engineering : Zoran Stamenkovic

Facade design : CXEMA

Facade construction : CXEMA

Project sponsor/ support : Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and BMW

Descriptions

Urban situation : Preservation of Silence was installed in the Gorky Park in Moscow to create a quiet place in the urban environment

Participatory architecture & urban interaction

Host organization : Gorky Park, Moscow, Russia

Mediacredits

Ivan Erofeev

Ivan Erofeev

Ivan Erofeev

Ivan Erofeev