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Acoustic Urban Shell
Shaping sound gently: biomimetic design for shared resonance
Role: Designer | Researcher | Prototype Developer
Years: 2016
Client: Municipality of Tel Aviv
Location: Ben-Gurion Blvd, Tel Aviv
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Context
In dense cities, public sound often becomes conflict.
Music spills into residential windows. Expression meets resistance.
But what if, instead of regulating volume, we redirected resonance?
The Acoustic Urban Shell emerged as a response to this urban tension:
how can street musicians - and the culture they generate - coexist respectfully with those living above and around them?
Scope: Public Furniture Design, Urban Acoustics, Biomimetic Form
Strategy
The design draws from natural acoustic geometries - seashells, spirals, ribbed membranes.
Its curving form collects, contains, and reflects sound outward, laterally - not upward.
Instead of sound traveling vertically into nearby apartments, it stays grounded at pedestrian level.
The bench becomes an amplifier for the street, not for the building.
The shell is both seating and sound filter- infrastructure for shared presence, not control.
Sound as social infrastructure
The shell reframes sound not as noise or nuisance, but as a communal asset - something that deserves to be designed for.
In a city that often forces expression into corners or silences it altogether, this prototype makes space for improvisation, generosity, and shared resonance.
It’s an urban artifact that believes people should be allowed to sing - and that architecture can help everyone else enjoy it.
Impact
The shell was installed in a busy street in Tel Aviv, and immediately altered the behavior of its environment:
musicians instinctively positioned themselves within its curve; passersby slowed down; residents reported less disturbance.
The project suggests that design can regulate emotion as much as sound - not by silencing expression, but by shaping its path.
A spatial instrument, not just a structure
A spatial instrument, not just a structure
Rather than behave like a fixed object, the shell responds:
to voice, to wind, to position. Its form is performative, but not dominant.
It does not demand to be used - but once discovered, it’s hard to ignore.
It shows how a small, passive intervention can actively reshape behavior - turning friction into rhythm, and transience into attention.
It is not a bench.
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It is a tuning fork between self and city.