Student Works #2 – Making Wind Visible

PTURE
by Jonathan Yue, Yip Ching Lok, Geraldine Lum, Song Xiao Xing, Yi Hye Mi

Sometimes to move forward, you got to look back at the past. As design becomes more complicated, with inevitable emphasis on sluggish practical issues like structure and services, it can be inspirational to remember the energy and idealism of early projects.

This brings to mind a project done by fellow classmates back in Year 2. The brief was simple – a sound sculpture, raising awareness of the sonic through form. So it is not really architecture: it’s part art, part science contraption. Here nature becomes the mediator between sound and shape. In their own words, they wanted to create an “interplay of time, movement and sound”.

(Hundreds of moving flags)

As wind blows, it calls to attention hundreds of flags taller than human height, and like automated louvres they open or shut the path of noise coming from the nearby road. Imagine the visual delight when these flags shift from one state to another, like a domino effect, a battalion of swaying flags!

(No dust on acrylic)

A path meanders amidst all the flags. Walking through, the experience kicks in – when buses cease to be heard with a gush of wind, or when a cacophony of engine roars accompanies the opening of the sonic gates.

(A path of experience)

What also amazes me is the effort behind this project – experimentation leading to tectonic materialisation as well as an elegant acrylic model as seen above. The energy to explore, from concept to realisation to presentation, is somehow an intrinsic quality of early works. Many people eventually forget how it used to be, and the Mundane sets in, losing the magic of doing architecture, or whatever it is that they are doing.

So here is a potent reminder of the inquiring mind, something to inspire lest one has lost his/her way.

See more:

NUS Sound Sculpture Report

Sound Sculptor Baudouin Oosterlynck + Sculptures

JY’s Flickr!

towards technology crit…