Aside the visual elements, the ingredient in which visitors to the dome will immerse themselves more than anything else is the exhibition’s 3D sound experience. That sound experience is produced by the custom set-up developed by ZKM | Centre for Art and Media. With the 52 speakers distributed all about the structure, the “Klangdome” (“Dome of Sound”) is a unique high-tech instrument designed to achieve a spatialisation of sound.

With an exterior diameter of 15.7 metres and a height of 8 meters, the steel structure created by System 180 occupied almost the entire space of the historical atrium of the Martin Gropius Building. The tubing, with a diameter of 60 mm and using lengths of up to 5 meters, looks positively gossamer on such dimensions. In order to emphasise the structural purity of the installation, we used black steel treated with linseed oil.

The ISM Hexadome project gave the System 180 architecture team the opportunity to showcase its enormous experience and technical knowledge. In addition to the design and honed-down quality of the structure – which used only 360 tubing components to enclose a space of 930 cubic meters – our experience of creating structures inside listed buildings was very much in evidence in the work. The Institute for Sound & Music (e. V.) has been officially constituted as an association since 2016 with the aim of founding a museum dedicated to sound, immersive art and electronic music. The System 180 team heartily supports this initiative and would like to thank the Institute for their outstanding teamwork in completing an inspiring project.