The Conch: A Wave-Like Sea of Bells

The ‘Atoll’ open plaza at the Mapletree Business City in Singapore needed some sprucing up, and local architecture and design team FARM brought an interesting solution to the table called The Conch. "This particular image keeps playing in our heads : An idyllic stroll along the beach, we chance upon a conch, we hold it to our ears and listen to the sounds of the sea." The team built a series of outdoor steel sculptures in the plaza pavilion which "presents itself as a highly fluid, wave-like sea of bells – its shape also reminiscent of the trumpet’s elegant sprouting form." FARM explained. Beyond the soothing and intriguing aesthetics of the sculptures, another cool feature is that The Conch is a poetic wind instrument, enabling one to listen to the ‘sea’, to the slight movement of the air. Each of the ‘Conch’s’ bells comes together to the ground collectively as stalks. They are dotted with funnels where one can put their ears and listen to the wind. Behaving like nature and taking from nature, the Conch is reactive and interacts in its own ways to people.

(Images Provided By FARM Architects)