Ph.D.-Scholar
Phone: +45 3536 7654
E-mail: cbe(at)dkds.dk
Attached with
Department of Research and Artistic Practice
Functions
Research
Research Project
The PhD project bears the working title The Idiom of Absorption. The project is funded by the textile company Kvadrat, The Ministry of Culture Denmark and the Danish Design School and is expected to be completed spring 2011.
The theme of the project is how textile can absorb sound in architecture and the aim is to develop a set of guidelines and examples for architects and designers of how architectural and acoustical needs can be fulfilled by textile.
The project takes its departure in the meeting between sound, textiles and architecture - a meeting that includes both conflicts and potentials: Sound is invisible and an integral part of architecture. The idiom of architecture relates, however, primarily to its visual expression.
Textile has got a wide range of visual qualities and furthermore good sound absorbing properties. It is therefore assumed that textile can absorb sound and interact with a contemporary architectural context in one form – the project investigates how.
In architecture already exists a rich variety of architectural forms that regulate sound. But these angled, curved and structured planes regulate sound through reflection. Textile regulates sound by absorption. But there exists no corresponding idiom for this type of sound regulation. Contemporary architecture is most often built of hard materials, which creates spaces with too long reverberation time. The problem is generally solved by mounting visually neutral acoustic panels on walls and ceiling. This creates a space with an inconsistent visual and aural expression: We see a space with smooth and seemingly hard surfaces, but we hear a space without boundaries, while walls and ceiling do not reflect the sound back to us. The need of dampening the reverberation time and the consistence of visual and aural perceptions are conflicting. Textile can perhaps solve this problem, without compromising the consistence of our spatial experience. Textiles have good sound absorbing properties, which relies partly on the type of fabric and partly on its location in space. Also, textile has got interesting architectural qualities, which consists of its wide span of expression and functions, such as transparency, structure, flexibility and lightness.
The project consists of a series of practical studies of how the absorbing properties and architectural qualities of textile can be combined. These studies are based on and assessed through theories of acoustics, architecture and space.
Short resume
Cecilie Bendixen, M.Arch.
Born 1975, Copenhagen
Education:
The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.
Architecture, Design and Industrial Form – 05
Ph.D. student, Danish Center for Design Researh / The Danish Designschool – start 07
Employments:
Studio Ploek –05-7
