Devon Turnbull brings "DIY audio" installation to the Cooper Hewitt
Brooklyn-based audio designer Devon Turnbull has installed a listening room in the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York, placing massive speakers and fine-tuned DIY equipment in the Carnegie Library.
Turnbull, who runs the audio brand Ojas out of studios in Brooklyn and Tokyo, brought his experiments in sound design to the Cooper Hewitt for the exhibition Devon Turnbull: HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3.
The installation features a comprehensive speaker setup by Turnbull, utilising components sourced from his collaborators worldwide.
A variety of different components were configured into a system that is both unique and showcases the ingenuity and archival knowledge of producers globally, with specific aspects such as housings fabricated by Turnbull.
This international, archival aspect of the work is particularly important to Turnbull, who emphasised the DIY nature of the configurations and lack of circuit boards to make it all work together.
"A lot of what I do is travelling the world looking for special components and keepers of knowledge that I can learn things from, and collaborate with," he said during a presentation of the work, between playing records and attentively testing the sound from a small swivel chair.
"The DIY component of this work is really important to me," continued Turnbull. "This is not a Hi Fi show. This is not commercializable. Most of it. It relies on components that I can't get more than one pair of, a lot of the time."
A set of massive speakers and subwoofers lines the back of the space, with a table displaying amps and turntables in front, supported by a custom arrangement by USM Modular Furniture, which also contributed to the benches and listening platform, complete with fabric seats by Kvadrat.
The large speaker housings in the back have perforated wooden edges, and the walls were lined with sleek soundproofing.
Some of the collaborators include Japanese manufacturer Denon, Norwegian audio theorist Bruno Spremstad and JC Morrison.
It provides an interesting contrast to the gilt and panelled reading room of the Carnegie Mansion, built in 1901, where the Cooper Hewitt is housed.
As of now, the speaker system is running through a digital signal processor, as some elements of the show are not yet complete. This is due, in part, to some of the furloughs that affected the Cooper Hewitt during the government shutdown earlier in the year, as it is funded through the federal Smithsonian Museum system.
The shutdown pushed back another show meant to be running concurrently, the Art of Noise, a collection of audio equipment from over the years, organised by San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Turnball stated that this ongoing process of finishing and fine-tuning the work actually works with his general process, which is iterative.
"It's fun to use that as a way of helping to educate people about not just my process, but just audio in general," he said.
"So right now, I think it's an amazing representation of what the speakers are basically capable of, but everything is running through a digital signal processor."
Turnbull also stated the importance of having his DIY work showcased in the austere halls of the Cooper Hewitt, for his own practice and DIY audio in general.
"I lived just a few blocks from this museum for a long time," he said. "I've been coming here for my whole life."
"I never dreamt that I'd have the opportunity to set something like this up and basically live and work out of this space for the next seven months. So that's very full circle, obviously, along with being able to work with a lot of these engineers that were heroes of mine for half my life or more," he continued.
"Just walk in, sit down, enjoy music."
Guest musicians and performers will be invited for special sessions throughout the run of the show.
Turnbull's audio systems are beloved throughout New York, gracing the spaces at iconic music venues such as Public Records in Brooklyn.
Also on at the Cooper Hewitt is an installation of large-format photography by Christopher Payne, whose work documenting American factories was highlighted by Dezeen last year.
Devon Turnbull: HiFi Pursuit Listening Room Dream No. 3. is on view from 12 December 2025 to 19 July 2026. For more exhibitions, talks, and performances in architecture and design visit Dezeen Events Guide.
The post Devon Turnbull brings "DIY audio" installation to the Cooper Hewitt appeared first on Dezeen.
