A spatial score structures how sound unfolds across architecture.
It defines what can be heard, where it appears, when it enters the experience and how it relates to other sonic moments across rooms, exhibits, media and visitor paths. It gives form to music, voices, ambiences, sound effects, interface sounds, media audio, generative systems, physical soundscapes and silence.
As part of Sound Scenography, the spatial score shapes how sound appears, travels, returns, connects spaces and supports the dramaturgy of the experience.
It composes time across space.
Sound unfolds in time. To orchestrate sound across rooms, exhibits, media systems and visitor routes, the spatial score defines when each element appears, how long it remains, how it changes and what it relates to along the way.
This applies to a composed piece of music as much as to an ambience, a loop, a triggered interface sound, a voice, a physical sound source or a generative system. Even a seemingly stable atmosphere develops through time. It repeats, shifts, accumulates, withdraws or changes its meaning through relation to other sounds.
The spatial score makes these relationships visible and workable. It gives every sound a place within the whole: where it enters perception, what it overlaps with, what it prepares, what it answers and how it contributes to the dramaturgy of the experience.
The result is a shared structure for composition, sound design, spatial audio, media planning, scenography, architecture and technical systems.
As the script of the sonic experience, the spatial score defines the dramaturgical structure before individual sound assets are produced in detail. It describes what appears, where it appears, when it enters perception, how it relates to other sonic layers and how it supports the larger arc of the space.
This script is written across architecture. It connects compositions, sound design, ambiences, voices, media systems, generative behaviours, interactions, acoustic zones and silences into one structure across space and time.
A musical score gives musical form to a composition. A spatial score works at the scale of the entire spatial experience. It allows the sonic experience to be read as a whole before it is heard as a whole.
A spatial score begins with three questions: When does a sound happen? Where does it happen? From where will visitors hear it?
These questions become especially important in exhibitions, museums and pavilions, because the listening position is rarely fixed. Visitors arrive at different moments, move at different speeds, pause, return and hear things from changing distances and perspectives. A sound may be close in one room, distant in another and present only as a trace somewhere else.
A voice may appear in one room and be heard across a threshold before visitors reach it. A musical motif may enter as a full composition, return in a transition and later remain only as a colour. An ambience may stay close to one exhibit, extend into the next space or connect several rooms into one shared atmosphere. The spatial score gives these relationships a structure.
To make these relationships workable, the spatial score places each sonic element in relation to time, space and visitor movement. It follows sound over time: when it appears, how long it remains, how it changes, what it overlaps with and when it disappears. It maps sound in space: the room, zone, object, screen, loudspeaker, threshold or acoustic area it belongs to, and from where it can be heard. It considers visitor movement: when people enter, where they pause, what they hear before arrival, what they encounter directly and how they connect separated moments as they move.
The rhythm of encounter shapes how the spatial score is perceived. In timed formats, visitors enter through defined time windows and follow a controlled sequence. In open exhibitions, museums and pavilions, they may arrive at any moment, stay for different durations and move through the space at their own pace. The spatial score keeps these different rhythms coherent through recurring moments, local loops, timed sequences, interactive triggers and generative layers.
As a working tool, the spatial score can be drawn as a map of time and architecture. Time runs horizontally, rooms or zones run vertically. This makes the development of each space visible and reveals what happens across the whole experience at the same moment.
The spatial score allows each room to have its own rhythm while shaping all rooms into one connected experience.
Sound over time
The development of sonic and media material: music, voices, ambiences, effects, motifs, loops, transitions, interactions, generative behaviours and silence.
Sound in space
The placement of sound across architecture: where sonic elements appear, from where they can be heard and how they relate across rooms, thresholds, objects, screens and acoustic zones.
Visitor movement
The way people enter, move through and perceive the spatial score: what they hear from a distance, what they encounter directly, what they return to and how they reconstruct the whole through movement.
Simultaneity
The relationship between sonic events happening at the same time across different spaces. This reveals where sounds overlap, where they answer each other, where acoustic spill becomes meaningful and where separation supports clarity.
Dramaturgical coherence
A spatial experience can have a precise arrangement of time and space while remaining open to different visitor paths.
Sound travels beyond the visible frame. It passes through thresholds, bends around corners, filters through walls, reflects from surfaces and reaches the body before the source is seen.
Vision usually begins when we arrive. Sound can begin before we are there.
This gives the spatial score a precise dramaturgical vocabulary. A visitor can hear a sonic event from another room before reaching it. A distant machine, voice, alarm, musical motif or atmosphere can prepare an encounter, charge a transition or make an unseen space feel present. Sound can connect moments that are physically separated and create continuity between rooms that the eye experiences one after another.
Anticipation
Visitors hear something before they reach it. The sound prepares the encounter and gives the next space emotional or narrative weight before it becomes visible.
Physical presence
Sound makes distant events present in the body. Even without visual confirmation, visitors sense activity, scale, tension or proximity.
Orientation
Sound can guide attention toward another room, object, route or event through distance, direction and movement.
Temporal connection
Events in different spaces can be linked through rhythm, recurrence, echo, synchronisation, contrast or silence. A moment in one room can become the preparation, consequence or memory of a moment elsewhere.
Perspective
The same sonic event can have different meanings depending on where it is heard from. Close, distant, muffled, direct, reflected or partially masked sound all create different narrative positions.
In larger architectural spaces, perspective becomes a matter of simultaneity. Several sonic events may unfold at the same time across different rooms, while visitors encounter them from changing distances and positions. A sound can be central in one room, distant in another and present only as a trace somewhere else.
The spatial score makes these relationships intentional. It arranges the possibility of hearing one moment from another: the ear can connect places before the body has moved between them.
A spatial score describes the sonic experience through several connected layers.
Hierarchy
What carries meaning, what supports atmosphere, what provides feedback and what remains in the background.
Placement
Where sound appears in relation to rooms, objects, screens, loudspeakers, thresholds, routes and listening positions.
Timing
When sound begins, how long it remains, how it changes, how it overlaps and when it disappears.
Transitions
How visitors move from one sonic condition to the next through thresholds, fades, motifs, silence, acoustic shifts or sharp contrast.
Media relationships
How sound relates to film, interaction, light, scenography, text, objects, projection, physical movement and visitor participation.
Acoustic zoning
Which sounds belong together, which sounds need distance, where spill supports the dramaturgy and where separation creates clarity.
Silence and distance
Where the space needs rest, focus or openness. Silence is part of the score. It gives the ear space to understand.
Exhibitions and museums ask sound to do several things at once. It may support orientation, create atmosphere, separate media zones, connect rooms, intensify objects, clarify interaction or give visitors a sense of the scale of a subject.
A single room may contain video, speech, interface feedback, interactive stations, neighbouring media, ambient sound, physical object sounds, visitor noise and the acoustic character of the architecture itself. The spatial score gives these elements a hierarchy and a shared dramaturgical logic.
The goal is to create the right listening condition for each moment. Some sounds guide. Some locate. Some connect. Some give emotional continuity. Some stay subtle, holding the atmosphere together.
This becomes essential when an exhibition, pavilion or spatial experience extends beyond one room or one exhibit. The spatial score turns multiple installations, media formats and sound worlds into one dramaturgical arc. It allows visitors to experience the space as a coherent world.
This connects directly to Exhibition Sound Design, where clarity, acoustic zoning, visitor movement, media coexistence and long-duration public experience become central conditions of the work.
We develop spatial scores early in the process, together with architecture, scenography, media planning, dramaturgy and technical design. The spatial score becomes a shared working structure for understanding how sound behaves across the whole experience before individual assets are produced in detail.
In this sense, a spatial score can become one of the first concrete tools of Acoustic Blueprinting. It translates listening into a shared planning language: where sound should support orientation, where silence protects focus, how rooms relate acoustically and how technical systems need to serve the spatial concept.
While Acoustic Blueprinting describes the early planning layer, the spatial score gives that layer a temporal and spatial form. It shows when and where sound appears, how it overlaps with media, architecture and visitor movement, and how the listening experience develops over time.
Reading the space
The process begins by reading the architecture as a listening situation: rooms, routes, thresholds, materials, sightlines, neighbouring media, visitor flow and acoustic conditions. This reveals where sound can travel, where it should stay local, where it can create anticipation and where the space needs quietness, distance or focus.
Mapping time and place
This step maps when and where content appears across the experience: duration, rooms, zones, chapters, recurring moments, synchronised moments, loops, transitions, silences, interactive events and generative behaviours. Because sound is time-based and spatially perceived, every sonic element needs both timing and placement.
Building the score
The spatial score takes shape as a map of time and architecture. Time runs horizontally, rooms or zones run vertically. Music, voices, ambiences, sound effects, media sound, interface sounds, physical sound sources, transitions and silence are placed across this map.
Composing what happens together
Across the score, simultaneity becomes visible. We can see what happens throughout the architecture at the same moment, which sounds overlap, which sounds answer each other, where acoustic spill becomes meaningful and where sonic separation is needed.
Pacing the encounter
A spatial score is written for a moving listener. It accounts for how visitors enter, pause, approach, return and hear sound from changing distances and perspectives. Recurring moments, local loops, timed sequences, triggers and generative layers keep the experience coherent, whether visitors follow a controlled route or move through the space at their own pace.
Integrating systems
Composition, sound design, spatial audio, media playback, interaction, generative systems and physical sound sources are brought together. The spatial score defines their timing, placement and relationships across the experience.
Tuning on site
The score is refined in the actual space: timing, levels, frequency balance, localisation, transitions, acoustic spill and silence. This is where the score becomes a lived listening experience.
The result is a sonic experience composed as one spatial dramaturgy.
Spatial Score belongs to Sound Scenography as one of its central working methods. Sound scenography defines how sound shapes perception, orientation, atmosphere and dramaturgy across a spatial experience. The spatial score turns this intention into decisions about timing, placement, movement, media relationships and silence.
From this foundation, it connects several KLONG practices: Sound Scenography, Spatial Audio, Immersive Sound, Exhibition Sound Design, Interactive Sound, Generative Sound and Data Sonification.
Sound Scenography
The broader spatial and dramaturgical discipline behind the work.
Spatial Audio
The practice of distributing, localising and moving sound through space.
Immersive Sound
The design of sonic presence, depth and bodily perception.
Exhibition Sound Design
The application of sound scenography to museums, pavilions and cultural spaces.
Interactive Sound
Sound that responds to visitors, sensors, movement, systems or live input.
Generative SoundSound that evolves through rules, data or algorithmic behaviour.
Data Sonification
The translation of data into audible form.
These KLONG projects show different uses of spatial scoring: synchronised narrative, acoustic clarity in open exhibitions, synchronised musical architecture, pavilion-wide motif systems and kinetic audiovisual dramaturgy.
MINESET shows how a spatial score can stage one narrative across several spaces at the same time. The former coal mine of Beringen becomes the site of an 18-minute incident unfolding across several buildings and rooms. The spatial score defines where each part of the incident appears, how it travels through the architecture and how visitors encounter it from different positions.
A sound may be direct in one room, distant in another and present only as a trace somewhere else. Visitors may hear machinery, voices or alarms before reaching their source, enter a scene while it is already unfolding, or understand the relation between buildings through sound alone. The incident becomes a spatial dramaturgy: one timeline distributed across architecture.
At the House of History Bonn, the spatial score works as an acoustic framework for a dense and open exhibition environment. More than sixty media exhibits, including numerous interactives, create a high concentration of parallel sonic sources.
The spatial score defines how interface sounds, feedback sounds, media audio, modular musical tracks, room tones and acoustic zones coexist across the exhibition. It gives the sonic world a shared language, supports accessibility and visitor focus, and keeps the open architecture acoustically legible.
Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai
The Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2020 is a spatial score in the form of synchronized musical architecture. Six large orchestral compositions unfold in sync across the pavilion. They share the same key and temporal dramaturgy, while each composition has its own theme, character and spatial identity.
Visitors move through distinct musical worlds that remain harmonically and dramaturgically connected. The spatial score here is close to an expanded orchestral composition: one temporal structure distributed across architecture, with several musical perspectives sounding in parallel.
Luxembourg Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka // German Pavilion Expo 2025 Osaka
Expo pavilions often use the spatial score to create continuity across many different exhibits, media formats and spatial situations. The core method is frequently motif-based: musical or sonic ideas return in different spaces, transformed according to scale, content, interaction and atmosphere.
A motif may appear as a full musical theme in one room, as a subtle harmonic colour in another, as a rhythmic gesture in a transition or as a small interaction sound inside an exhibit. The spatial score gives these differences a shared musical and spatial identity.
Research Wall - Humboldt Forum Berlin
RESEARCH WALL at the Humboldt Forum Berlin shows the spatial score in relation to kinetic and audiovisual systems. Scientific narratives, movement, media and spatial sound unfold as one continuously changing installation. The score defines how sonic layers relate to physical motion, visual behaviour and narrative density over time.
Here, the spatial score helps several streams of information coexist as one readable experience. Sound participates in the timing, rhythm and readability of the whole system.
A spatial score only becomes audible through formats, methods, systems and workflows that preserve its spatial intention from composition to playback.
Spatial Audio Formats & Methods
Spatial Audio Production Workflows
What is a spatial score?
A spatial score structures how sound unfolds across architecture. It defines when and where sonic elements appear, how they behave over time and how they relate across rooms, media, architecture and visitor movement.
Is a spatial score the same as a musical score?
A musical score is the composition in musical form. A spatial score works at the scale of the spatial experience and organizes musical and non-musical sound across architecture, media, visitor movement and dramaturgy.
Does a spatial score always need a timeline?
Yes. Sound is time-based, so a spatial score needs a temporal structure. Since it is spatial, it also defines where sonic events appear and from where they are perceived. Even interactive, generative or open-ended sound needs timing: when something can happen, how long it lasts, how it changes, what it overlaps with and how it relates to the rest of the space.
Is the visitor path always synchronized with the spatial score?
The spatial score defines where and when sonic and media content appears across the experience. Visitors may encounter this structure through fixed entry windows, a guided sequence, free movement or hybrid formats. This distinction is crucial in exhibitions, museums and pavilions where people enter, pause and move at their own rhythm.
How is a spatial score different from spatial audio?
Spatial audio describes how sound is distributed, localised and perceived in space. A spatial score defines when and why spatial sound behaviors appear within the larger dramaturgy of the experience.
When is a spatial score useful, and when should it be developed?
A spatial score becomes relevant whenever an exhibition, pavilion, installation or spatial experience contains multiple rooms, exhibits, media formats, sound sources or visitor paths. It should be developed early, together with architecture, scenography, media planning, visitor flow and dramaturgy.
Planning an exhibition, museum or spatial experience?
We design spatial scores that connect sound, architecture, media and visitor movement into one coherent sonic experience.
