Acoustic Tile

"A primary function of the suspended acoustical tile ceiling has been to secure the difference between ‘space’ (below) and ‘plenum’ (above), by isolating the mechanical hum of environmental technologies within the plenum according to a sociotechnical topology of silence and noise. The aesthetics of that topology—silence below, noise above—are a matter of producing and maintaining meaning based on the epistemological and material difference between space and air." – Reinhold Martin

Reinhold Martin is a historian of architecture and media and Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University’s Architecture Department (New York, USA).