Laundromat Redesign
Parsons Design Studio I (Fall 2011)
Instructor // Allan Wexler
A proposal for the renovation of 10th Street Laundromat (10th St. & Ave. A) in the East Village.
The sounds of the washers and dryers are picked up by hidden contact microphones and filtered through resonaters. The resultant sounds are then projected into the laundromat through speakers placed above each machine. These sounds drive live, kinetic drawings on screens placed along the walls, giving visual and aural cues for the status of each machine.
Final Renders:
As an example of the sounds this proposed laundromat could produce, I recorded the sounds of an industrial washer and dryer and processed them using digitally-modeled resonators and filters. Here are the final, processed sounds followed by the original, raw sounds.
Raw sounds from an industrial washer and dryer + laundry machine sounds as transformed into music by the new laundromat design
As the washers and dryers run, the sounds they produce trigger kinetic drawings on the walls. This clip shows how the sound moves one of these drawings.
I wrote a sketch in Processing that takes a sound file or live sound input and uses it to drive a simplified version of the kinetic drawings below. As the washers and dryers run, the sounds they produce trigger drawings on the walls like this one.
Stills of the collection of kinetic drawings.
Scanned pages from sketchbook.
Photos from the existing 10th Street Laundromat.
