The Making Of An Immersive London Design Festival Installation

For London Design Festival, Melekzeynepstudio installed thousands of suspended cubes that responded to visitor sound and movement, a concept inspired by a neurological condition.

Melekzeynepstudio Creates Duo For London Design Festival

• 160 designers, engineers, lighting and sound technicians, and installers led by Melekzeynepstudio founder Melek Zeynep Bulut
• 6,480 cubes
• 19,000 linear feet of steel cable
• One dozen speakers
• 6 microphones
• 2 sensors

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Designer and Melekzeynepstudio founder Melek Zeynep Bulut has synesthesia, which causes sensory crossovers—tasting colors, feeling sounds—and her projects are often informed by the neurological condition.

One such was Duo, a site-specific temporary installation she created over the course of three months from interactive acrylic cubes for London Design Festival last September, collaborating with consultants on isometric views and sectional drawings using Rhinoceros, KeyShot, and Photoshop software.

A rendering shows Duo where it was ultimately exhibited, the Painted Hall, an 18th-century building with elaborate murals often referred to as Britain’s Sistine Chapel that’s part of the Old Royal Naval College.

Measuring 46 feet long, suspended 20 feet from the ground via stainless-steel cables, the 40 rows of acrylic cubes formed a cuboid pierced by a vaulted tunnel through which visitors walked, their sound and movement captured by microphones, speakers, and sensors.

Duo’s handmade cubes, which were mostly 7 inches square except for the halved cubes that formed the arch, progressed from opaque white at the perimeter to transparent near the center for optical depth. As visitors proceeded through, microphones captured their voices, which were echoed back into the installation through speakers, and sensors detected movement, triggering dynamic waves of light.