Project Description
The renovation of these 50-year-old lecture halls required significant acoustic absorption to be added to Walter Netsch’s very hard spaces to meet contemporary performance standards. Concrete floors and ceilings, exposed concrete structure and brick walls made for a difficult acoustic environment for understanding speech and an even worse one for amplified audio-visual presentation.
The solution involved installing a series of acoustic baffles that provide significant sound modification to the halls. The baffles maximize the acoustic performance in the space, while adding a colorful sculptural counterpoint to the rooms’ tough architectural bones.
The baffles were computer modeled in 3D to provide both performance analytics and a fabrication model for the installation. The baffle components were designed to then be fabricated out of acoustic foam on a computer-driven milling machine from the 3D model.