Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s architectural concept to signify service areas within the Lubelska Spoldzielnia Mieszkaniowa* (LSM) complex (e.g. the Apteka, Kindergarten etc) with a parabola-shaped roof has been adapted into an audio work which offers a playful renewal of LSM’s Open Form Theatre.

The “Lubelski Pawilon Powietrza Formy Otwartej” (Lublin Open Form Pavilion of Air) is a floating roof of sound which is heard to extend across the Open Form Theatre, triggered by GPS and accessed via a smartphone, headphones and the echoes.xyz app. Inspired by Polish architects Oskar & Zofia Hansen’s “Open Form” architectural concept (ca. 1959), this audiowork is one of 15 locations in 9 countries in the pan-European Open Form Pavilion of Air series, using sound and site-mapping to offer a playful renewal and reframing of public space as an essential place of engagement for the community.

The Open Form Pavilion of Air is delineated by this audio roof which lets in the elements and surrounding sound but also changes them, using the same mathematical principles as the parabola, their rising and falling shape heard as lines of rising and falling tones that intersect and change one another. The logo shows the overlapping zones that form the Pavilion, the rising and falling parabolic sound heard when walking through the LSM’s Open Form Theatre, juxtaposed with field recordings from the area. By using your mobile phone, the Echoes app and headphones, you become a participatory listener producing a composition in real-time. Your navigation creates a unique choreography via GPS, combining and changing sounds mapped on the Open Form Theatre through the app. Hear the metropolitan location and its context become transformed by the sounds forming this floating acoustic architecture, revealing an immersive, profoundly spatial and physical experience. The Pavilion has no visible presence outside the app and can only be accessed and enjoyed at the Open Form Theatre at LSM in Lublin.

The Lublin Open Form Pavilion of Air is the first in a series of pan-European works, followed by Pavilions for Meetfactory (Prague, CZ), Folldal Kommune (NO) and Sirius Arts Centre (Cobh, IE)

* Lubelska Spoldzielnia Mieszkaniowa – the Lublin Housing Cooperative (LSM) is one of the largest post-WWII housing projects in Eastern Poland. Overview here and at the Museum of Housing Estates (MOM) which is at LSM