Ortogiardino sonoro | Antonio Galeano

The project, drawn up with the Amadeus Foundation in Milan, was conceived as a temporary installation for Expo 2015.

The Sound Garden is a space that seeks to integrate the optimal conditions for live music listening and an open-air experimental laboratory for horticultural and floral cultivation with the aid of music therapy.

The Space is intended for public use of piano concerts or concert ensembles - (the basic model is the chamber music quartet), the presence of flower and vegetable cultivars intends to experiment as a priority objective the relationships between sound-musical perception of plants and their growth and behavior (music therapy).

The Ortogiardino Sonoro is made up of a removable circular pavilion (15m diameter) entirely made of wood and steel equipped with a continuous circular acoustic shell, able to "tune" the listening space by modifying the tail of sound reverberation; the "acoustic leaves" from which the acoustic shell is formed have anechoic rhomboids coated with two different materials, wood and fabric, with differentiated acoustic reflection coefficients - 0.15 and 0.50 respectively - rotating around their own vertical axis, rhomboids show the different faces towards the front of the sound wave generated by musical instruments, causing a different acoustic reflection, and therefore a modulable modification of the sound reverb tail. The modulable "acoustic response", which the Ortogiardino Sonoro is equipped with, can be modulated in relation to musical or scientific research needs, or by the coexistence of both instances considered.
The architecture of the Ortogiardino Sonoro is a pavilion for about 100 seats, capable of continuously hosting instrumental piano concerts preceded by a brief explanation on the scientific project of the Ortogiardino Sonoro, and the aromatic and nutritional qualities of the cultivated essences in the vegetable garden in question.