Senyai: Vaulted Acoustics

The ceiling of Senyai, inspired by the vaulted geometry of ancient Thai architecture, incorporates acoustic and lighting performance into a contemporary spatial experience with soft ambient effects. Visual layering of ceilings fins is suggestive of movement while changing the diffusion of global sound though varied depth of each individual double-curved vaulted zone. The global texture of the surface and color plays with light to create a sense spatial weightlessness and visual expansion, as the eye travels beyond the each articulated edge. At the same time the slats appear as a continuous surface, mimicking an active body of water, or, in homage to the restaurant’s name (“senyai” translates to “big noodles” in Thai), a bowl of hot noodles in broth. The ceiling is formed by a series of 275 unique vertical slats that perpendicularly sectionally change in series in the perpendicular direction–no two slats, or vaults, are alike. Using a non-uniform diagrid as a method for standardizing highly varied component-based construction, we created a localized effect of privacy while diffusing sound through the dynamic character of geometry.

Volume Editors
Amir Ameri & Rebecca O'Neal Dagg

ISBN
978-1-944214-14-2