10 ETUDES

Commissioned by Facilitair Bedrijf ministry of OC+W
Interior designers: OTH (Ontwerpgroep Trude Hooijkaas BNA)

On the 5^th floor of the Hoftoren in The Hague (the ministerial wing of Education, Culture, and Sciences) are two oval meeting rooms.
To improve the acoustics, these rooms are partially decorated with wooden partitions with a very fine grid with holes.
“… But what reduces the sound, seems to cause visual annoyance…”
By lacing the partitions and the grids with ‘strings’, I intend to reduce the visual ‘white noise’ with ‘music’.
Each room will have 5 different scores, 10 variations, 10 etudes for the oval rooms.
Close up and in a certain light, the pattern will be clearly visible,
but from a greater distance, the pattern will reduce to a soft mist,
background music.

Design and completion: 2004