Byggfenomen: The First and Last Thing We See

The grid of acoustic tiles you have sat under in schools, hospitals and office corridors is here, except it hangs on the wall of Hall 2, at eye level. You walk in and, for once, you are looking straight at it.

Architect Daniel Johansson of Byggfenomen built it at 1:1 scale. ArkDes points out that the grid isn't really a ceiling, since it carries nothing: its job is to hide ducts, cables and sprinklers. Repeated across a wall, the tiles form patterns, a kind of ornament. Johansson did something similar with his blue villa in Djursholm, where lightweight aggregate blocks became the façade's decoration. The squares you counted through slow maths lessons now have a wall at the national architecture museum.

It is a single installation, the contemporary chapter of the ArkDes Collection display, built around the museum's question: why is so little care given to such a large part of the rooms we live in? Entry is free, and ArkDes is open until 20:00 on Tuesdays and Fridays.