Sona is a new listening space in Mexico City’s Condesa neighborhood that reframes music as a collective, sensory ritual. Designed by Épico estudio and Panorama, the 245 m² semi-basement adopts a museographic approach, turning listening into an immersive spatial experience. Drawing from the Japanese jazz kissa and Pauline Oliveros’s concept of deep listening, the project organizes the existing interior into four spatial sequences: threshold, tea area, listening room, and gallery. Exposed concrete, brick, and layered traces of paint preserve the building’s material history, while acoustically refined interiors, curated lighting, and tactile furnishings shape the conditions for attentive listening.
Sona is a new space dedicated to listening practices that was conceived by a group of friends led by Luis López (Lulo) as an environment focused on sonic immersion, free of devices, alcohol, and distractions.
Lulo emphasizes: “Unlike social listening bars, at Sona conversation is kept to a minimum; in contrast to wellness spaces, disconnection is not encouraged, but rather sustained attention. Listening here implies a form of discipline.”
The project transforms the act of listening into a conscious, deliberate, shared, and above all deeply sensory experience.
Sona’s listening sessions encompass a wide range of musical genres, presenting complete albums by diverse artists as well as playlists specially curated for the venue. Lasting between 45 and 60 minutes, these sessions are designed to heighten perception and foster deep engagement with sound.
To achieve this, the space integrates both a Dolby Atmos system and a high-fidelity stereo setup, making it a unique case in Latin America and likely in the world. To date, the venue has welcomed renowned Latin American artists who have accompanied listening sessions dedicated to their respective albums. Here, music is experienced in its entirety, within a space designed to give sustained attention to sound and to make listening a shared experience.
Located in Condesa, one of Mexico City’s established cultural and architectural neighborhoods, Sona sits within an urban context defined by tree-lined streets, public parks, Art Deco architecture, galleries, and an active cultural life. The neighborhood’s cosmopolitan character places the project within a dense and highly animated urban environment, making Sona’s deliberate withdrawal from the city’s acoustic saturation particularly relevant to its conception.
The project draws inspiration from the Japanese jazz kissa of the early twentieth century—public spaces dedicated to the playback of vinyl records through high-fidelity sound systems—as well as from Pauline Oliveros’s theories of deep listening, which emphasize active and conscious engagement with sound, expanding awareness beyond music itself to encompass the surrounding sonic environment.
The auditory experience is complemented by a carefully curated selection of teas sourced from Japan, served as part of a ritual that enhances the contemplative nature of each session.
Sona’s design adopts a museographic logic.
Furniture, unique pieces, books, and objects are displayed throughout the space as if they were works of art.
Through its choice of materials, the project reveals its construction layers: exposed concrete, brick, and traces of accumulated paint over time function as a record of its history.
The venue is organized into four main areas: threshold, tea area, listening room, and gallery.
The journey begins at an entrance that functions as a threshold against urban acoustic saturation, accompanied by the ambient sound of ODA speakers, which broadcast live audio from the Macaw Sanctuary in Costa Rica.
The tea area is organized around a central bar, which also functions as a reception point for visitors, an information desk, and a tea service station. Lighting in this area was designed to be indirect, with warm LED tubes installed along the beams, independently controllable to create different atmospheric conditions depending on the occasion.
The tea area is accompanied by objects designed by Mexican creators that reinforce its material, ornament-free character: a lamp by Nuumbra Estudio provides focused light over the bar, while stainless-steel shelves by Album Goods hold books available to visitors. These are functional pieces that, at the same time, carry a distinct presence of their own.
The core of the space is the listening room, an acoustically treated, screen-free environment with a capacity for up to 20 people, governed by a clear premise: no phones, no conversation. The acoustic treatment, developed in collaboration with Bourdeau Acoustical Design (BAD), is not intended to isolate sound but to refine its perception. The audio system integrates sound sources directly into the spatial design in order to prioritize the listening experience. Sessions—structured around full albums or curated playlists—unfold without interruption, restoring music to its condition as complete work.
A key element of this space is the central light source, which displays color gradients that shift according to the music, creating a distinct atmosphere before, during, and after each session.
The experience is articulated through two complementary systems: an immersive Dolby Atmos setup, calibrated in collaboration with Genelec, and an analog stereo system by OJAS designed by Devon Turnbull, focused on sonic fidelity and texture.
For comfort within the listening room, a modular furniture system offers a variety of seating options that each person can choose upon entering, whether lying down, sitting, kneeling, along with eye masks and even blankets for covering oneself.
The gallery functions as a mutable space for exhibitions, activations, and events linked to sound.
Rather than a fixed program, Sona is conceived as an adaptable infrastructure for different forms of listening and gathering around music, tea, and contemporary rituals.
At a time marked by the fragmented and accelerated consumption of music, Sona proposes another temporality: that of attentive listening, unhurried and embodied. An experience that does not occur in isolation, but in relation to others and within a shared space.
Facts & Credits
Project title Sona
Typology Interior
Location Mexico City, Mexico
Area 245 sqm
Status Completed, 2026
Architecture Panorama (Marcela Segovia), Épico estudio (Erik López)
General Director Luis López (Lulo)
Operations Paulina Arreola Barragán
Acoustic Design Bourdeau Acoustical Design (Ethan Bourdeau)
ODA Live Sound Nick Dangerfield, Kelsey LaSeur
Graphic Design Shortcut (Tania Delgado)
Operations and Experience Team Rodrigo Belsaguy, Carolina Gutierrez, Lorena Campos, Jose Ibarrola
Project Management Jorge Villanueva, Ailed Mata
Audio Integration Project Genelec (Miguel Dominguez, Genelec Latin America Manager)
Representaciones en Audio Erik Fragoso, Consulting and Sales
Dolby Atmos System Design Sepiaa (Jorge Rico, Brian Treto)
Dolby Atmos Cabling Cesar Maldonado
Partner Collaborators Foco Lab, LTRL, Album Goods, Nuumbra Estudio, FENN, Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms
Photography María Fernanda López, Erik López and Zaickz Moz
This project was submitted to Archisearch through the “Submit a Story” feature, where architects, designers, and creatives are invited to share their work for publication.