
KERFONIC WALL| The Sound of Kerfing
Location: Autodesk Gallery, San Francisco
2021 | transLAB
Collaborators: Alireza Borhani & Erfan Rezaei
Links: PA News, DesignBoom
Publications: Advancing Tunable Acoustics through Smart Materials and Reconfigurable Kerf Structures
Project Description: Kerfonic Wall is a design-build project to make a 20′ x 8′ permanent installation in a boardroom lounge of Autodesk Gallery in San Francisco. This project showcases the application and benefit of an in-house script-based platform named “kerfD“ in the acoustic field. Since the sound environment of the lounge area was not conducive to intimate and private conversations in the open-plan layout, the goal was to provide an aesthetically pleasing wall out of kerfing to improve the acoustic performance of the lounge, creating a diffuse soundscape within the gallery’s echoey space. Besides simulating the acoustic effects of the wall at the early design stage, the sound quality of the lounge was physically tested and validated onsite to ensure the desired auditory experience. For the Kerfonic Wall, due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and lack of access to any fabrication equipment (except for a laser cutter), we had to develop a proper strategy for fabricating an entire three-dimensional wall installation with a 2.5D tool.





