Sound Garden

Parallel Studio’s Variation installation in Berwick Hall at the University of Oregon sonically activates the lobby by altering sound emanating from the adjacent music rehearsal space.

Written by Jamie Reed

If you ask most people about design, they’ll tell you it’s seen, not heard. Pose that question to Ethan Rose, however, and he’ll put up a strong argument that sound is an integral part of design. The Portlander founded Parallel Studio in 2016 to help people integrate sound into their built environments. The studio’s creative team specializes in site-specific sound sculptures that define a space’s identity. “There’s been more interest in the past few years in creating experiences that connect people to stories in unique ways,” Rose explains. “When we first meet with clients and collaborators, we help them realize that sound is around us all the time, changing and informing our perceptions.”

Parallel’s installations include a sculpture in Seattle’s Kinects residential tower made up of more than 100 speakers mounted in a cascading pattern behind a white mesh screen and playing the natural sounds of rivers, streams, and waterfalls. For the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, Rose’s team mounted weathertriggered speakers on a lobby ceiling, their musical output determined by data streamed from a rooftop weather station.

The entry in Seattle’s residential Kinects tower features a speaker sculpture that plays an algorithmic mix of water recordings.