Designing Silence: How Intentional Sound Design Shapes Our Modern Spaces

Written By: Grace Xu

When was the last time you heard silence?

Not the muted lull between conversations or the pause after a playlist ends—but the kind of intentional stillness that invites your nervous system to settle, your breath to slow, and your awareness to return to the present. In a world engineered for speed and stimulation, the importance of intentional sound design for creating spaces of stillness has become not only rare but also radical.

A Quiet Intervention: Hannah Marshall’s Heartline

This idea of silence as presence—not absence—is beautifully embodied in Heartline, a recent sound installation by artist Hannah Marshall at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Inside a 33-meter-long hidden gallery, 40 participants sat back-to-back, immersed in an 11-minute spatial composition that gradually phased from rich sonic texture into silence, culminating in a synchronized collective heartbeat at just 40 beats per minute.

Part of the V&A’s Friday Late public programming series, Heartline was envisioned as an intentional disruption of the noise and speed of modern life. Combining immersive spatial audio with opening vocals by Kate Fleur Young and an original score by composer and cellist Lucinda Chua, the experience offered what Kristian Volsing, Senior Curator of Contemporary Programs at the V&A, called a “space for focused, communal, and meditative moments—an intentional intervention through deep listening, in search of balance.”Unlike traditional sound art, Heartline doesn’t fill a space with music—it clears space for awareness. It invites listeners to slow down, tune into their bodies, and experience silence not as a void, but as a source of emotional grounding.

“Silence, just as much as sound, is the gateway to deep listening—to truly connecting with ourselves and with others,” Marshall shared in Mission Magazine.

In a culture saturated with sonic clutter, Hannah’s work reminds us that acoustic design isn’t only about addition—it can also be about subtraction, offering a vital reprieve from the relentless noise of constant connectivity.

Intentional Sound Design Shapes Space

Silence, then, isn’t simply the absence of noise. Like architectural form or lighting, it’s increasingly recognized as an intentional design element, or ‘acoustic intention.’

Musician David Byrne touches on this in his 2010 TED Talk, “How Architecture Helped Music Evolve,” where he observes:

“We make spaces to fit the sounds we want to hear.”

From Gothic cathedrals to ballrooms and jazz clubs, built environments have long shaped and been shaped by the sonic experiences they’re meant to host. These were spaces where intentional sound design was built into the blueprint, whether to amplify sacred chants or encourage communal rhythm.

One of the clearest historical examples is the ancient Greek amphitheater. The open-air theater at Epidaurus, built over 2,000 years ago, remains a marvel of acoustic engineering. Its semicircular geometry and limestone seats enable voices on stage to be heard in the back row through natural sound amplification.

Today, modern venues like Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado carry on this legacy. Framed by towering red stone formations that act as natural sound amplification, Red Rocks offers exceptional clarity and minimal reverb.

And sometimes, acoustic intention emerges in places where you least expect it. Grand Central Terminal in New York features a “Whispering Gallery,” where curved tile arches near the Oyster Bar allow a whisper in one corner to be heard clearly across the space. The result is a spontaneous moment of sonic intimacy amid the chaos of transit.

A more radical example of acoustic intention is an anechoic chamber—a room designed to absorb all sound reflections. The Art of Sound docuseries takes us to Nokia Bell Labs, NJ, where the room is designed to be a void so silent that even your own voice sounds unfamiliar. John Cage famously visited, hoping to experience absolute silence, but to his dismay, he could still hear his heartbeat and the subtle rhythms of his nervous system. So, he concluded: “Oh, we never hear silence, ever!”

It’s an extreme, but powerful reminder: when we shape space for sound, we also shape the quality of our attention, awareness, and experience. Across time and geography, these examples reflect a simple truth: sound has always been a fundamental part of spatial design, whether for performance, connection, or contemplation.

Sonic Pollution by Design

And yet, in much of the contemporary architectural design process, sound design is treated as an afterthought—if it’s considered at all.

Take the rise of open-plan offices, once heralded as ideal for collaboration and creative exchange. But in reality, the design often undermines focus and well-being. Constant background noise—from conversations, typing, phones, and HVAC systems—creates a cognitive burden our brains must continually filter out.

Ironically, in these spaces designed for interaction, many people withdraw. Headphones become barriers. Spontaneous conversations fade. Some choose to work remotely just to reclaim a sense of acoustic autonomy.

The effects of this noise aren’t just psychological—they’re physiological. In The Art of Sound docuseries, neuroscientists Robyn Landau and Dr. Erica Warp, working with L-Acoustics London, demonstrated the neurological effects of noise using EEG studies. Urban sounds—like honking cars or construction—activated brain regions associated with fear, anxiety, and disgust. When we’re exposed to sound we can’t control, stress hormones like cortisol rise; heart rate increases. Over time, this contributes to what researchers now refer to as sonic pollution—a form of environmental stress with real consequences for our health, mood, and concentration.

Designing Acoustic Atmospheres

That’s where acoustic well-being comes in: An emerging field at the intersection of architecture, neuroscience, and sound design. It’s not just about quieting down; it’s about tuning in.

Acoustic well-being asks: How can we shape sound to support the desired emotional experience in a space?

This means more than controlling decibels. It means designing acoustic atmospheres that align with emotional and cognitive intention. In hospitals, nature-based soundscapes have been shown to lower anxiety. In schools, thoughtful acoustic treatment improves focus. In homes and public spaces, intentional quiet creates a space for rest, reflection, and renewal.

Here, silence becomes an active design element—not a void, but a medium. It is the negative space that gives sound its form.

The Future of Sound Design

Across disciplines, more designers, engineers, and artists are thinking about sound not just as a byproduct, but as a primary design material. Sound design within our architectural spaces becomes intentional, rather than an afterthought.

Whether through immersive installations like Heartline, which slow us down and reconnect us to our own rhythms, or the use of biophilic soundscapes that bring nature back into built environments, the future of design is not just about what a space looks like, but what it sounds like.

And with technologies like L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal Sound, which allow creators to position sound in 3D space, we’re entering an era where sound is as sculptural and spatial as architecture itself. In this context, acoustic intention asks us to consider the sonic impact of the spaces we shape on bodies, minds, and communities.

In the end, intentional sound design for acoustic well-being asks us to move through the world more attentively—not just to what we see, but to what we hear, and how that hearing shapes our experience. The invitation is simple yet profound: What if we designed our spaces not only with visual and functional intentions, but also with acoustic ones?

Silence, after all, isn’t passive. It’s intentional.

“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything.” – Gordon Hempton, acoustic ecologist.