Reina Suyeon Mun’s (SMACT ’23) project SilenceTop was featured in designboom magazine.
SilenceTop is an interactive microarchitecture furniture object that constructs an alternate relationship between objects, space and humans, around the subject of silence. It reframes the landscape of domestic spaces by furnishing and confronting silences in various scenarios. A reimagination of the conventional wooden South Korean low table typically used for serving tea and coffee, SilenceTop utilizes motors and sensors in its aluminum, brass and plexiglass form.
The emerging transdisciplinary practice of microarchitecture blends the two related fields of furniture and architecture. As much as furniture is concerned with human conditions and the spaces it is situated in, so is architectural design. SilenceTop explores how an object can converge the scales played in both fields, by creating a new mode of participation to form an alternate spatial relationship between the microarchitecture object and the people. The project constructs interactive responses to an abstract subject of silence and creates an intriguing, unconventional space between a distinct furniture object and architectural space.
Reina Suyeon Mun designs the table’s radial spatial configuration to accommodate up to three people at once. Its dimension is developed through investigating sensor technologies, conditional interactivity, and design with proxemics. Edward’s proxemic theory deals with the amount of space that is found necessary to allow optimal conversation between people in different circumstances. As a result, the designer creates a distance of 75cm between people sitting around the ‘SilenceTop’.
