Credit: LUCA
The Luxembourg Center for Architecture’s (LUCA) has announced it will host the exhibition Sonic Investigations: a Field Report from Wednesday 11 November to 2026 to Saturday 20 February 2027, at its premises in Luxembourg-Clausen.
LUCA say the exhibition invites visitors to rediscover Luxembourg through listening, and asks, “What if we could experience a country not primarily through what we see, but through what we hear?” Rather than relying on images, maps or conventional architectural representations, the project explores how sound can offer alternative ways of understanding and portraying a territory – revealing relationships between people, animals, natural environments, infrastructure and the built environment.
Developed by curators Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch and Alice Loumeau, together with field recordist Ludwig Berger and philosopher Peter Szendy, the project brings together architectural perspectives, territorial research and sound practices. Across Luxembourg, approximately 200 hours of field recordings were collected in places where different environments, activities and forms of life intersect. From natural landscapes to spaces shaped by human activity and technological development, these recordings reveal the many layers of a territory in constant transformation.
Originally presented at the Luxembourg Pavilion at the nineteenth International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2025, Sonic Investigations returns to the places where its sounds were recorded. As the project team explained: “We borrowed sounds, travelled with them to Venice, and brought them back.”
At the heart of the exhibition is a sound composition by German sound artist Ludwig Berger, built from the recordings gathered across the country. Lasting approximately 30 minutes, it takes visitors on an acoustic journey through Luxembourg, inviting them to encounter familiar, as well as unfamiliar, places from a different perspective.
The exhibition at LUCA is not a reproduction of the Venice presentation, but a new chapter in the project. While the original sound composition remains, the installation offers a different spatial experience, bringing sound and visual material together in a new way.
Before crossing the curtain, visitors encounter parabolic loudspeakers by Australian sound artist Anthea Caddy projecting a sound composition based on readings by French philosopher and musicologist Peter Szendy.
Further inside, a darkened space centres on Berger’s sound composition and opens up the research behind the project. References, books, notes, curatorial investigations, cartographies, and photographic material offer insight into the conceptual processes that informed the Venice presentation. Rather than simply showing the finished project, the installation gives visitors access to some of the ideas and enquiries that shaped it.
A limited-edition printed addition to the 2025 publication Ecotones, featuring contributions by Carlotta Darò and Keller Easterling, will also be available free of charge at LUCA.
A programme of events accompanies the exhibition, offering different ways to engage with its themes:
• On Saturday 14 November, La maison aux grandes oreilles invites children and adults to explore the relationship between sound, imagination and architecture. Beginning with a visit to the exhibition, the activity continues with a drawing exercise in which participants imagine and create a house and its surroundings based on what they hear (more dates: 23 January and 20 February 2027).
• On Saturday 21 November, Luxembourgish sound artist and ecoacoustic researcher Sam Erpelding leads Sonic Realm: A Public Field-work, a guided sound walk through Clausen. Equipped with microphones and headsets, participants are invited to explore the neighbourhood through attentive listening and discover sounds that often go unnoticed. Drawing on Erpelding’s ongoing work with sound and the environment, the walk offers a practical introduction to listening as a way of experiencing the places around us.
• On Wednesday 25 November, Le son n’est pas une image brings senior lecturer and researcher Carlotta Darò (ENSA Paris-Malaquais / ETH Zurich) to LUCA for a talk in French exploring the relationship between sound and images. Drawing on images from The Architecture of the Wire, the presentation will be followed by a conversation with the exhibition’s curators, offering an opportunity to further explore the ideas behind Sonic Investigations.
• On Saturday 20 February 2027, join the exhibition’s curators Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch, and Alice Loumeau for a guided tour of Sonic Investigations: a Field Report. The visit offers an opportunity to explore the exhibition in their company and gain further insight into the research, ideas and curatorial choices behind the project. The tour will be held in French and English.
The opening night of the exhibition will take place from 18:00 on Wednesday 11 November at the Luxembourg Center for Architecture (1st floor, Malt, 1 Rue de la Tour Jacob, L-1831 Luxembourg-Clausen).
Attendance is free; however registration is required.
Registration information and further details of the exhibition programme can be found at https://luca.lu/evenements/sonic-investigations-0.
