SoundArt HOT — Berlin, est. 2014
A composer-led studio for permanent sound environments.
Founded by Lena Marković in a converted spice warehouse on Köpenicker Straße. Ten years on, the studio designs, composes, and installs sonic architectures for hotels, museums, and cultural institutions worldwide.
§ 01 — A note from the founder
A studio built from research, not from presets.
SoundArt HOT began in 2014 as a single room with an anechoic chamber and a reel-to-reel. Lena Marković, then recently returned from a decade of sonic research at IRCAM in Paris, wanted a studio that treated acoustics the way a Bauhaus-trained cabinetmaker treats wood: as a primary material, not a finishing touch.
Ten years later, the studio is twenty-four people. We have composed, sculpted, and calibrated permanent sonic environments for Aman Resorts, Rosewood, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. We have been awarded the Prix Ars Electronica Award of Distinction for Sonic Topographies (2021), and named one of Wallpaper* Magazine's Top 50 Design Innovators (2022). We hold ISO 9001 certification for sonic environment design and installation.
We are not a vendor. We do not maintain a price list. We do not license stock ambiences. Every project begins with a question about the architecture, the curatorial intent, and the way a guest is meant to feel when they walk into a room — and ends, on average four years later, with a sound environment that has become indistinguishable from the building itself.
— Lena Marković, Founder & Composer
§ 02 — The studio by the numbers
Verifiable institutional credentials, current as of 2024.
- 2021Prix Ars Electronica — Award of Distinction, Sonic Topographies
- 2022Wallpaper* Magazine — Top 50 Design Innovators
- 2019–23Selected sound partner — Aman Resorts, Rosewood, Louvre Abu Dhabi
- 2023Average on-site calibration delivers a 4.2 dB improvement in perceived ambience vs. baseline
§ 03 — Founder & Composer
Lena Marković — from IRCAM Paris to a Berlin warehouse, 2014.
Lena Marković trained as a composer at the Conservatoire de Paris before joining IRCAM in 2004, where she led a sonic research group focused on spatial rendering in non-conventional architectural envelopes. Her doctoral work, completed in 2009, examined the perceptual thresholds of low-level ambient sound in reinforced-stone heritage buildings — the same acoustics later found in the Louvre Abu Dhabi's permanent collection galleries.
She left IRCAM in 2013 to return to Berlin and, in 2014, founded SoundArt HOT in a former spice warehouse on Köpenicker Straße in Kreuzberg. The studio's first commission — a permanent ambient score for a private library in Mitte — was completed on a single Neumann KU 100 dummy head and a hand-built diffusion array. That library is still playing today.
Marković continues to lead the studio's composition practice in addition to its institutional relationships. She oversees every site calibration personally and signs off on every installation before handover.
Begin a commissioning conversation →§ 04 — The atelier
24 sound artists, engineers, and installers in one Berlin building.
SoundArt HOT operates from a single five-storey building at Köpenicker Straße 154, Berlin Kreuzberg. One floor is the composition studio. One is the anechoic chamber and 64-channel Ambisonic rig. One is the workshop where our custom 31-driver reference arrays are built and tested. Two floors are offices, archives, and a quiet listening room reserved for client reviews.
- Studio
- SoundArt HOT Studio GmbH
- Founded
- 2014, Berlin
- Headquarters
- Köpenicker Straße 154, 10997 Berlin, Germany
- Team
- 24 full-time — composers, engineers, installers
- Reference rig
- 64-channel Ambisonic array; 31-driver reference array (custom)
- Certification
- ISO 9001 — Sonic environment design & installation
- Direct line
- +49 30 4477 1820 · [email protected]
§ 05 — Begin a project
Begin a commissioning conversation with the studio.
Every SoundArt HOT project begins with a paid consultation and ends with a permanent installation. We work with hospitality groups, museum curators, and architects on commissions typically scoped over 12 to 36 months. Our intake calendar for the 2025 / 2026 commissioning year is open.
Or write directly to [email protected] · +49 30 4477 1820