The weave of the new translucent fabric traps sound, while letting light—and in this photo from the Swiss lab, a view of neighboring houses—through.

What’s the News: Noisy rooms are no fun, but neither are those smothered in heavy sound-canceling drapes. The solution? A translucent curtain that quenches sound by behaving like foam, developed by Swiss materials scientists and a textile designer.

How the Heck:

To get a grip on what kind of curtain would block sound but not light, the research team at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Research built a computer model of the acoustic qualities of fabric. This model helped pinpoint the exact properties—for example, the fabric’s density and the shape of the microscopic holes that pepper it—that the new textile would require. They then passed their findings off to the designer, Annette Douglas, to turn into reality.

The curtains were tested in a seminar room
built specifically for measuring acoustics.

Douglas—who has been ...