We build houses before our eyes. But we forget our ears.

Imagine a Saturday evening. A beautiful living room with a large open kitchen. High ceilings, a lovely wooden or stone floor, lots of glass, smoothly plastered walls. The kind of house you walk into and think: what space. Six friends are sitting at the table. All somewhere around fifty, maybe a bit older. Cooking is underway, a bottle is opened, someone puts on music. The smell of the food, lovely people around you, stories that start right at the front door. Exactly the kind of evening you hope will last a long time.

At first, nothing is out of the ordinary. Everyone is talking, laughing, and listening. But as the evening progresses, something happens imperceptibly. More glasses and plates appear on the table, the extractor fan turns on, someone stirs a pan, the music is still playing, and several conversations start happening simultaneously. Someone on one side of the table begins speaking a little louder to be heard. The other person does the same. Without anyone noticing, the noise level rises.

And then the acoustics enter the room.

Not visible. No device that starts beeping. No warning light. The room still looks exactly as beautiful as it did an hour ago. But sound bounces off the floor, windows, ceiling, and walls. Voices mingle. Consonants disappear. A word is dropped. A sentence is half understood.

For many people of fifty, sixty, or seventy, that is the moment when hearing suddenly becomes work.

Perhaps you can still hear perfectly well in silence at home. Perhaps you don't feel at all that your hearing has deteriorated. But our hearing changes throughout our lives. The higher tones, in particular, become more vulnerable on average, and it is precisely in that range that much of the information we use to distinguish speech is contained. Just for fun, do a simple high-tone test with someone twenty or thirty years younger than you. There is a good chance that the other person will still hear something while you have long since thought that no tone is being heard. Of course, such a test is not an audiological examination and does not literally tell you the age of your hearing. But it does make something palpable: we do not hear the same way our entire lives.

And it is precisely in the turmoil that this comes to light mercilessly.

There sits someone at the table who can still hear that someone is talking, but is finding it increasingly difficult to follow what is being said. A few words register, the rest has to be filled in. The brain tries to make sense of loose fragments. While the others are already on to the next joke, he is still busy reconstructing the previous sentence. Sometimes you just laugh along because everyone is laughing. Sometimes you nod yes even though you don't really know exactly what you're nodding to. And sometimes, in the end, you just keep your mouth shut.

Not because you have nothing to say.

But because listening has started to cost too much energy.

At the end of such a wonderful, enjoyable evening, everyone says: “It was lovely.” And it really was. But one of the guests drives home with a head that is completely drained.

As a clinical physicist-audiologist, I have been seeing this for more than twenty-five years. People say in my consultation room: “In a quiet conversation, it actually goes fine, but put me in a restaurant and I am lost.” Or: “I can talk well with my partner, but as soon as the children and grandchildren are around, I withdraw.” When it comes to hearing, we often think of the ears first. Of an audiogram. Of hearing loss. But hearing always arises from an interplay between the person and the environment.

And that is exactly where we started doing something remarkable with our houses.

We have removed walls. Combined the kitchen and living room. We love large open spaces, high ceilings, concrete, natural stone, glass, design, and sleek walls. We build beautiful houses before our eyes. But sometimes we forget our ears.

In France, acoustics in restaurants are now taken so seriously that a separate standard for acoustic quality has been developed. I find that interesting. After all, restaurants are places where people come to eat, of course, but above all to be together. To tell stories. To meet each other.

But why should we pay less attention to exactly the same thing at home?

A large eat-in kitchen can acoustically become almost a small restaurant hall. And that is where two worlds from my own life come together, which for a long time I thought were completely separate.

Science and art.

Or perhaps better: to hear and be seen.

I have been sick at home myself lately. That changes your perspective. Things that are normally taken for granted suddenly become more important. A walk. A book. Getting some exercise. Someone calling. A friend who doesn't immediately tell you what to do, but just listens. Family. People with whom you don't have to keep anything up.

I realize once again how important a listening ear actually is. Being heard is so much more than sound reaching the eardrum. It means that someone stays with you for a moment. That your story is allowed to exist. That someone tries to understand what lies behind your words.

And when life isn't going the way you'd like, you need anchors. For some, that is walking. For others, making music, gardening, or reading. For me, painting is such an anchor. Not because something needs to be finished, not because there is a deadline, and certainly not because I have to be working. Quite the opposite. Creating helps me step away from thinking for a moment. My hands are doing something, my mind gets space, and sometimes something emerges that wasn't there before.

That is exactly what happened recently. During an informal conversation with friends of my brother, we started talking about their professional music studio in Maastricht and an acoustic issue they are facing. There is no commission and no agreements. It was just a conversation. But it was the kind of conversation where you suddenly feel something starting to emerge.

I listened to their story. To what that studio means to them. To music. To Maastricht. To their passion. And slowly, an image appeared in my mind.

Maastricht. Not as a postcard. Not as a sharply drawn skyline. But almost disappearing into mist. Light. Water. A horizon on which buildings briefly become visible and then dissolve again.

At home, I picked up my sketchbook. Not because I had to, but because I felt how much pleasure it gave me to draw that idea. In my mind, it grew spontaneously into something grand: a monumental diptych, about two meters high and nearly four meters wide. Acoustically absorbent, precisely because image and sound are allowed to come together in such a space. But above all, a work of art.

Maybe it will remain a sketch. Maybe the idea will one day get the chance to become reality. I don't know.

What I do know is what happened while I was drawing. I felt something I haven't always felt these past few weeks: enthusiasm. Curiosity. A desire to create.

That alone made my world a little bigger at that moment.

That is what an anchor can do.

And while drawing, someone else came very close again: Guy van Grinsven .

Guy is no longer with us, but his photography has been a tremendous source of inspiration for me. One image in particular has always stayed with me: his photo of Maastricht, seen from the Noorderbrug towards St. Peter's. A morning when the city disappears almost completely into the mist. Water and sky nearly merge into one another. St. Peter's is there, but barely. You have to look. And perhaps that is precisely why the feeling is so strong.

Years ago, that photo already inspired me to create a painting.

That work didn't just happen by chance either.

The clients lived in a beautifully renovated townhouse in the heart of Maastricht. High walls, large spaces, a stunning interior. Their daughter has hearing impairment. For them, acoustics was therefore neither a luxury addition nor a theoretical problem. They knew from everyday life what a space can do to communication.

I created a large acoustic artwork for them.

St. Peter almost completely disappeared into it, lost in soft hues, mist, and abstraction. But when we spoke about that image, it turned out that little church was not just a recognizable landmark in Maastricht. It was a place where people had gotten married. A place where loved ones had been bid farewell. A building where various moments from a human life converged.

Suddenly, the work was no longer about color, size, or acoustics.

It was about a life.

Later, these people also bought the original photo of Guy. They even met him personally and had their picture taken with him. Not long after that, he was gone.

Looking back on it now, I realize how many lines converge there. A photographer looking out over Maastricht on a misty morning. A family with a daughter who is hard of hearing. An old mansion where acoustics matter. A church encompassing weddings and farewells. A painting that emerges from all those stories.

And now, years later, I am sitting over a sketchbook again.

Maastricht again.

Fog again.

Acoustics again.

But now for a music studio.

Perhaps this is ultimately what art means to me.

Not making something that looks nice with the sofa. Of course, color, light, architecture, and interior matter. After all, a work of art lives in a space. But for me, truly interesting art is about something else. About meaning. About the possibility that someone stands before a sculpture and finds something of themselves reflected in it.

A memory. A person. A place. Hope. Loss. Love.

And then we tell those stories to each other.

At a table with six friends. In a kitchen. In a living room. In a music studio. During a difficult period. Sometimes with many words and sometimes with barely one.

But for that, we need to be able to hear each other.

That brings things full circle for me.

For more than twenty-five years, as a clinical physicist and audiologist, I have been trying to understand why hearing seems natural to some people and requires so much effort for others. As an artist, I try to do something completely different: create images that move.

I am beginning to understand better and better that perhaps they are not two different worlds at all.

Both are about perception.

About space.

About attention.

About meaning.

And ultimately about connection between people.

Perhaps, therefore, we should not design our homes solely for what we see. Perhaps we should also ask ourselves what a space does to what we hear. And perhaps the solution to this does not have to consist of technical panels that we prefer to keep out of sight.

Perhaps that solution could actually become the most personal and special object in the room.

A work of art.

A work that tells a story and helps the space make our stories more audible.

Where Art Meets Science.

For ultimately, one conviction remains for me:

Hearing is so much more than just the ears.