Acoustics in architecture

04 Feb 2020 Anna Demming

Taken from the February 2020 issue of Physics World where it appeared under the title "Sound designs".
Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app.
The refurbishment of public buildings is often more complex than meets the eye. Anna
Demming speaks to acousticians and architects about the acoustic considerations behind their
designs for public spaces, and some of the tricks to tackle the conflicting demands on these
venues

Complex space The new foyer and café at Bristol Old Vic has been acoustically designed so
that small groups can enjoy intimate conversations (left). At the back of the foyer, the
auditorium wall (right) has acoustic qualities that allow this area to be used as a performance
space. (Courtesy: Fred Hawarth)
In the historic city centre of Bristol in the UK, down a cobbled street lined with mismatched
buildings, is the oldest continuously running theatre in the English-speaking world –
the Bristol Old Vic.

Built in 1766, and originally called the Theatre Royal, the building underwent a multi-
million-pound refurbishment to mark its 250th anniversary. The work required detailed and
careful design to ensure that the great Georgian auditorium – renovated in the first phase of
the project – can serve the acoustic needs of a wide range of live theatre, music and dance.

Just as complex were the acoustic requirements of the rest of the building, which was
renovated in phase two. This second stage included additional performance spaces and
offices, as well as a foyer that accommodates a café bar and a further potential performance
space. All these different functions have specific and often distinct acoustic requirements,
which can be at odds with a host of other technical, cultural and aesthetic demands.

Someone who helps overcome these kinds of hurdles to achieve the ideal acoustic set-up
is Bob Essert. Having studied both engineering and music, in 2002 he set up Sound Space
Vision (SSV)  – a London-based company of acousticians and architectural consultants.
One of SSV’s current projects is a £48.8m renovation of another Bristol auditorium: the
city’s Colston Hall, which lies just down the road from Bristol Old Vic and is due to reopen
in 2021. As an 1800-seat concert venue, the scale of Colston Hall offers plenty of space for
the artists who have performed there since it first opened in 1867, from full-scale symphony
orchestras to the Beatles. It has what is often described as a “shoebox” geometry – long with
high ceilings that give plenty of space in front of the musicians for a rich sound around the
audience, and less space for the sound to get lost behind the performance area (see Levitt
Bernstein Architects’ rendering below). The shoebox design is a classic format that some say
produces the best acoustics, with nine out of the world’s top 10 concert halls having this
shape according to a 2016 survey by Business Insider.
Shoebox geometry Colston Hall render by Levitt Bernstein Architects.
While Essert says the biggest determinant of acoustics is scale, geometry comes second on
his list of factors, followed by the materials used. “All three play a part,” he says. A vastness
of length, height and general scale in a performance space is not, however, always desirable.
Essert points to the hall at the Yehundi Menuhin School in Surrey, UK, as an example where
SSV aimed for more compact dimensions that could seat 300 people in a space crafted
specifically for solo and chamber performances. “The further away the boundaries of the
room are from the listener and to a certain extent the performers, the weaker the sound is,”
says Essert.

In simple terms you can think of sound waves attenuating and losing intensity as they travel
across the dimensions of the room. As Essert emphasizes, how loud a performance sounds is
a key factor for making the audience feel enveloped and immersed in the experience, and as a
result designing specifically for solo performers means ideally designing a smaller space. So
how can a solo be heard in a space designed to accommodate a full symphony orchestra, and
give a feeling of intimacy in a hall that seats 1800?

Reflections on sound design

Ultimately the impact of a production on the audience is dominated by the artistry of the
performers on stage. However, an effect that can help a performance to sound intimate and
enveloping, even in a huge hall, is reflected sound. Because sound moves at a finite speed –
343 m/s in dry air at 20 °C – any reflections from the boundaries of the room will reach
someone in the audience with a delay of several milliseconds compared with the sound that
has travelled directly from the performers. You may not consciously hear the delay, but
Essert points out that as the brain assembles audio input, this delay – and crucially, the
amplitude and direction of arrival – affects the experience.

Soft furnishings as opposed to hard walls will dampen these reflections as demonstrated back
in 1895 by US physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, who is widely acknowledged as the
founder of architectural acoustics. During an assignment to improve the acoustics of the Fogg
lecture hall at Harvard University, he armed himself with an organ pipe and a stopwatch and
embarked on a series of experiments, determining by ear how long a sound took to decay as
he, for example, changed the number of cushions in the room. Sabine soon established that it
was the area of cushions (or any absorbing material) that was linearly related to reverberation
time.

The advent of the oscilloscope in the 1960s moved acoustics technology up a gear, making it
possible to directly image sound input and analyse the delays from these reflections.
Researchers then began to find out more about the role of the direction of sound. For
instance, reflections from the sides can make audiences feel more immersed in the
experience, just by being surrounded by the sound.

An appreciation of the role of reflections drew attention to the way sound is fed from one
surface to another, and affected the design of performance spaces. The basic shoebox
geometry is still popular with architects as it has been since the construction of medieval
churches, effectively the concert halls of their day. But in the early 1980s – following
research in the 1960s and 1970s by Michael Barron and Harold Marshall in the UK and
research groups in Göttingen and Berlin – Essert and other acousticians began shaping
geometries to guide sound. By engineering the direction in which they reflected the sound,
they could bring more sound in from the side. Examples of this architecture
include Christchurch Town Hall in New Zealand, the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham, UK,
and the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, US.

Levels of sound
Colston Hall has already seen several renovations and reconstructions (figure 1), the most
recent being in 1951 led by Philip Hope Bagenal, the UK’s most prolific concert-hall
acoustician of that period. The 1936 renovation had been focused towards cinema – which
was then the market-leading use for halls of that nature – resulting in an emphasis on sight
lines, audience capacity and cinema sound. But, having survived the Blitz, the concert hall
fell victim to a fire started by a cigarette in 1945, and in the 1951 rebuild, Bagenal and
architect J Nelson Meredith restored the interior to prioritize classical music performances.
Most notably, Bagenal and other acousticians in the UK back then felt that British concert
halls lacked definition. The British musical life and taste had been coloured by the sound of
town halls around the country, explains Essert – “tall, flat floor spaces that produced a muddy
sound”.

1 Many-phase makeover Bristol’s Colston Hall has been refurbished several times,

including in 1936 (top left) and 1951 (top right). For the current project, Sound Space Vision
took spatial sound measurements of the space (bottom left) and created an acoustic computer
model of the proposed design (bottom right). (Courtesy: Sound Space Vision)

Bagenal endorsed a stepped rectangular plan for Colston Hall and introduced materials that
would absorb bass “to avoid boom”. In particular, he added a canopy over the stage to project
the clarity of string instruments. Although the oscilloscope was not yet established in 1951 so
not available to aid design, it had been realized that canopies can reflect sound back to
musicians so they can hear themselves.
One of the issues now being addressed by SSV’s renovations at Colston Hall is a literal
shortcoming of this canopy. Following extensions to the stage to accommodate larger
orchestras, the canopy no longer covers the string section who sit at the front of the stage. In
addition, it also turns up at the leading edge, directing the sound out to the audience and
making it even harder for the string musicians to hear themselves. Among the renovations
SSV is helping implement will be an extended and reshaped canopy with more rigging in it to
meet more extensive technical requirements.

Not all reflections are helpful either. The balconies at Colston Hall previously extended over
14 rows of the auditorium, creating a “dead zone” for hundreds of seats: multiple reflections
from the bottom of the balcony attenuated a lot of the sound, leaving it dry and weak by the
time it reached the seats at the back of the tier under the balcony. The renovation project will
include dividing the balcony from one deep structure into two shallower ones so that there are
no seats so deep under one low ceiling.

Symbiotic solutions
Back at the Bristol Old Vic, reflections again came in handy to meet the multipurpose needs
of the new foyer. It has been cleverly designed so that people can enjoy a quiet conversation
over a coffee without being deafened by the sound of everyone else’s chatter. However, with
a pressure to maximize revenue from the building, the same space also needs to provide a
more vibrant atmosphere and is even designed to accommodate gigs, where audiences do
want to be immersed in sound. Vangelis Koufoudakis – an acoustician from the design
firm Charcoalblue who worked on the Bristol Old Vic refurbishment – admits that trying to
meet multipurpose requirements like this can be problematic. “You can end up with
something like a sofa bed – it’s not a great sofa and it’s not a great bed.” Fortunately,
architects and acousticians on the project were able to “dig out” a unique solution 250 years
in the making.
In the world of acoustics, we love irregular shapes because they stop sound focusing or other
unwanted acoustic artefacts

Vangelis Koufoudakis

In the case of the foyer, the architects were keen to provide an open space that connected the
theatre to the street and city beyond. Most of the walls of the café-bar area are sound-
absorbing. Irregular angles as opposed to parallel walls avoid strange resonances and the
room makes liberal use of wood wool – recycled timber and wood filings that absorb sound
and convert it to heat. The ceiling of the foyer is a structural diagonal grid formed by glued
laminated timber – “glulam” beams. The diagonals form irregular angles that trace back to
historical room geometries in the rest of the building. “In the world of acoustics, we love
irregular shapes because they stop sound focusing or other unwanted acoustic artefacts,” says
Koufoudakis. As a result of these and other acoustic tricks of the trade, the vast open-plan
foyer – which you might expect to sound clanging and echoey – provides the perfect
acoustics for a quiet tête-à-tête. How then to allow for a more vibrant atmosphere in the same
space at different times?

By unearthing the building’s original stone wall to the Georgian auditorium at the far end of
the café-bar area, the project team was able to exploit it as an acoustically reflecting backdrop
for a performance space directly in front. The wall itself is broken and pockmarked from the
passage of time, which means that it reflects a diffused sound with no strange high-frequency
resonances. “It’s an amazing architectural surface that reveals the historic scars of the
theatre,” says Tom Gibson of Haworth Tompkins and the project architect for phase two of
the refurbishment. The thermal mass of the rugged masonry surface also helps regulate the
temperature in the café bar.

Level-headed design
The foyer benefits too from another architectural quirk that turned out to be a blessing in
disguise. Various add-ons and renovations over the centuries since the theatre was first
constructed have led to different ground levels. The project team did not want to disturb the
1970s basement slab or foundations as this could have been expensive and an archaeological
risk. “Basically, the old city wall used to run through the foyer and we were worried we
might find some historic skeletons,” says Gibson. One of the design challenges was therefore
to resolve the difference between the historic floor levels, 1970s floor levels and the newly
proposed levels. The solution has been to ramp the new foyer down to street level to provide
universal access for the first time in the theatre’s history, while the upper ground floor level
creates a convenient raised stage area in front of the original auditorium wall.
2 Centuries in the making These 3D Nolli models show Bristol Old Vic before (a) and after
(b) its 2016–2018 redevelopment. The original theatre building was deliberately set back a
distance from the street and over its 254-year history there have been many different
entrances. In the 1970s an adjacent building called Coopers’ Hall was used for this purpose.
The new purpose-built foyer has allowed Coopers’ Hall to be refurbished as an event space
and a small studio theatre. (Courtesy: Haworth Tompkins)

The architects have also been able to exploit the various ground levels throughout the site to
ventilate the venue’s studio theatre. This relatively small room was moved from the basement
and ground floor in front of the auditorium to the basement and ground floor in the Coopers’
Hall section, an adjacent building that served as the theatre’s entrance in the 1970s design
(figure 2). The move led to a non-compliant head height in the basement directly under the
foyer next to the street and created space constraints that made it difficult to install traditional
mechanical ventilators, which need a lot of room. “There was in any case an intent from the
project team to naturally ventilate the new studio theatre to save energy and associated costs,”
adds Gibson. The basement spaces (with non-compliant head height once the new foyer
ground floor level was designed) provided an opportunity to build in a new natural ventilation
“labyrinth”. It draws in air from the roof of the foyer through a masonry maze, which chills
and quietens the noisy outside air. The result: cool air enters the studio theatre with minimal
acoustic disturbance.

In fine shape
Not all architectural statements come from a fortunate alignment of pragmatic technical
requirements, however. The Berliner Philharmonie in Germany is widely considered a
milestone in the history of concert-hall design, and made a landmark departure from the basic
shoebox geometry that had dominated for so long. It was constructed between 1960 and 1963
to replace the former home of the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra, which had been bombed in
the Second World War. “People always gather in circles when listening to music informally,”
said the architect Hans Scharoun, an observation that led him to design the concert hall with
the audience seated around the orchestra on the slopes of a large bowl, like vineyard terraces.
This bold design inspired a number of architects who also wanted to make “a statement
building” and the vineyard geometry has been widely adopted over the past 15 years.

Sounds different The Berliner Philharmonie was built in 1960–1963 with a design that
resembles a bowl or a vineyard. The width is double that of a typical shoebox design.
(Courtesy: Shutterstock/posztos)

However, the vineyard geometry has been less popular with acousticians. When the audience
is spread out so far in such a wide room, the sound intensity and the subjective intensity of
the music are reduced for all. As a result, extending the surround form to a 2000-seat hall
with no balconies reduces the intensity and immersion in sound that was intended by a
musical composers. And because the audience encircles the stage, people sitting behind the
orchestra will hear things differently to those in front, and instruments such as the trombone
may sound bright on axis but quieter elsewhere. “You may be effectively getting a French
horn concerto because you’re only two feet away from them,” says Essert.

That’s why Essert feels the shoebox-like geometry is getting a revival. There has also been
interest in the psychoacoustics of tall narrow concert halls to stop audiences from feeling
“boxed in”. The new ceiling at Colston Hall , for example, will have a slight pitch at the
sides, mitigating the negative focusing effects of the previously concave ceiling. Convex
curves spread the sound in a helpful way and deviate from a pure cuboid, feeling less “boxy”.
Multitasking
Another challenge in venues like Colston Hall is to cater for amplified and non-amplified
music in the same space. While acoustics optimized for an orchestra will ideally enrich the
sound, designs for amplified music aim for clarity of sound with little reverberation so that
what the audience hears is almost exactly what is coming from the speakers. Digital
engineering can adjust levels for an amplified performance in an idealized neutral space to a
degree, but it cannot fully replace what a room with richer acoustics would do for a live
classical performance. Working with constraints of building budgets, retractable panels made
from glass-fibre board or even just curtains may be incorporated to absorb reverberation for
amplified music and introduce some acoustic versatility.

One of SSV’s projects that took these versatility requirements to a new level was the Xiqu
Centre in Hong Kong, where the space has to cater not only for amplified and non-amplified
Western music but various traditions of Chinese operas from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong
and Hong Kong as well. Optimizing this concert venue meant providing the means to balance
the sound of the singers with respect to the orchestra, and to emulate the open-air acoustics
these traditions were fostered on. The room’s finishes and the audio system in the Xiqu
Centre were developed hand in hand.
Unusual needs The Xiqu Centre
in Hong Kong has unusual acoustic demands. It stages a wide range of musical styles, so the
auditorium was designed with complex shapes, gaps and insulation to absorb or scatter
sound, including motorized curtains that can be adjusted as needed. (Courtesy: Sound Space
Vision)

The situation gets further complicated, however, as acousticians are no longer catering for
audiences expecting great live orchestral sound. Today’s concert-goers instead expect to hear
something that sounds like what they hear on their sound systems at home. The problem is
that these recordings are generated by engineers who locate microphones at carefully
identified positions around the hall or recording studio and then electronically mix the levels
and add channels so that you can hear the clarity of the solo and have the resonance of the
room at the same time. “You can’t actually get that sound,” says Essert. “But our ears have
been attuned to it.” One approach to deliver simultaneous clarity, resonance and envelopment
with architecture is to build a room within a room.

The idea emerged during Essert’s projects with Russell Johnson from Artec Consultants in
New York, where he found himself repeatedly faced with the problem of devising
multipurpose design solutions. In the 1980s Artec introduced a “reverberation chamber” to
certain concert halls, such as the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, US, and Symphony
Hall in Birmingham, UK. Essentially this couples the inner concert hall that the audience sees
to a secondary space, often using concrete doors on heavy pivots. That secondary space will
usually have a volume of another several thousand cubic metres and can be a “hard” or “soft”
space depending on the use of curtains. This allows it to act as a net absorber or net
reverberation generator, but the initial time decay of the room – the first 10–20 dB decay of
sound after it arrives – is generated by the geometry of the inner room. The idea was
developed further by Artec in Singapore, Los Angeles, Reykjavik and Budapest, and also
influenced the design team working on the Paris Philharmonie. Essert used the same
principles on the Sage Gateshead in the UK, partially coupling the main space with another
above a movable ceiling.

While acoustic design is based on the physics of sound, it hinges on a legion of other
structural and technical considerations that multiply as venues take on additional functions to
assist their revenue streams. And when it comes to renovating historic venues, engineering
solutions must not only be sensitive to the building’s history, but also comply with planning
constraints and meet the wide-ranging expectations of audiences. Pulling off that tricky
combination is no mean feat. But by ensuring that all contributing factors come together –
room geometry, sight lines, comfort, architectural features, building materials and so on –
architects and acousticians can provide an experience that, be it rap or rhapsody, coffee or
cabaret, leaves every visiting artist, customer and audience member content.