Auckland’s City Rail Link opened its doors to the public for a first look at the three new stations, connected by 3.45km twin rail tunnels.
Acoustic Research & Design (ARD) has been privileged to contribute to this major project, providing specialist acoustic support for the modelling, testing and commissioning of the Public Address and Voice Alarm (PAVA) systems at the new stations.
A great project to have been part of, alongside the many people and organisations involved in bringing the City Rail Link to life.
Atmospheric theatres are a class of their own. Auckland’s Civic Theatre is one of the last of its kind in the region, with a capacity of 2,378.
It is also the reason my daughter picked the show, she wanted to be inside the extravagant decor she had seen in pictures. And yes, we are entering the phase where she now wants to pick the shows too!
The journey to our balcony seats was part of the experience, through domed ceilings, Buddha statues and large chandeliers. The seats were comfortable and we had a great view.
The amplified show wasn’t too loud, source localisation was fine, and the music sounded dramatic and delivered well. If anything, perhaps a little too much dynamic compression during the sung parts (I assumed related to the use of headset mics) but I could be picky.
In any case, the Cirque show had it all. A full house, people lingering in the foyers long after the performance, and a very happy daughter.
Hard to ask for much more from a night at the theatre.
Last week, I co-chaired the first Internoise sessions (to my knowledge) dedicated to the Performing Arts. Amongst many fascinating papers, my co-chair José Augusto Nepomuceno’s presentation caught my attention.
Are acoustics, good or bad, part of a building’s heritage?
I asked this question in a post last year (See post), so I was particularly interested to read José’s paper looking at exactly this tension through four historic performing arts buildings in Brazil.
The examples are very different, from the extraordinary variable-volume Sala São Paulo, to the much more surgical acoustic correction of Sala Cecilia Meireles, and new performance spaces inserted within surviving historic structures.
What I like most is the idea that heritage is not only what we see: the acoustic character of a room can also be part of its identity, and sometimes deserves to be preserved rather than simply “improved”.
ARD is proud to attend and contribute to Internoise 2026 in Adelaide next month. Not only are we going to present our progress on visualisations of acoustics for performing arts venues, Thomas will also be co-chair of the session 3.3.4 Acoustics of Performing Arts and Listening Spaces!
We cannot wait to catchup with colleagues and peers and hear all the good work they do overseas.
There is excellent work being done everywhere in the world, by big and small firms. It is time to listen, share experiences, and learn a ton.
The best part about the Isarphilharmonie at Gasteig HP8 could have been the foyer, until Utopia Orchestra owned it.
This foyer is exciting, industrial, and perfectly sized. Built as a temporary 2,000-seat concert hall while the original hall is being reinvented, the venue makes use of an old factory building for the front-of-house: ticketing, café, cloakrooms, toilets, circulation, and probably a few spaces I never found.
Once the bell rings, it is time to percolate through the narrower entry towards the new-build concert hall and its tighter circulation spaces. Locals may know the routes to avoid bottlenecking, but there are enough newcomers (me) to jam the main access.
The concert hall itself is black, continuing the industrial-chic language, with steel wire mesh as balcony fronts. Suitable choices for a temporary hall. The seats and aisles are comfortable, but one cannot quite shake the feeling of being in an ad-hoc space.
The bare walls above the stage may contribute to that impression, but the main giveaway is the sawtooth-shaped ceiling. This curious design decision seems to reduce overhead reflections noticeably, from my row 18 seat. The sound envelopment lacked one dimension: clear sound coming from the sides, some from the rear, but not much from above. A clear contrast with KKL Luzern.
I also found that the hall did not favour blend in the string sections. Perhaps a result of the sawtooth ceiling and a largely horizontal diffusion pattern covering the entire room, including the side walls of the stage. The effect was a very analytical image of the orchestra, with individual instruments presented individually, too much to my taste.
Thankfully, Maestro Teodor Currentzis and his extraordinary Utopia Orchestra brought a programme with real punch, and an energy that made us forget the black walls, the two-dimensional sound, and the wire mesh.
Vilde Frang was stunning in Berg’s Violin Concerto, Dem Andenken eines Engels. Even more impressive, she returned as first violinist for Mahler’s First Symphony, Titan.
This time, almost all musicians, except the cellists, were standing, moving with the music, and physically magnifying each phrase. It was contagious and exhilarating, but it also seemed to improve the blend of the orchestral sound. Perhaps the movement of the instruments introduced just enough “fuzz” into the otherwise analytical reflection patterns. The orchestra sounded phenomenal, intimate, celebratory, inviting, passionate.
We were all carried away to a standing finale, the audience charged with as much adrenaline as the musicians. Maestro Currentzis and the Utopia Orchestra blew the sawtooth roof off the hall. I absolutely loved it.
With that Orchestra, the hall becomes great value for a temporary venue.
Luckily, there was still enough left in the tank for a backstage chat and a drink with musicians, back in that great foyer, where the bar closed far too soon.
If KKL Luzern is nearly 30 years old, it doesn’t show. (I was there with a client a couple of weeks ago.)
Designed by Jean Nouvel, the building still feels precise, theatrical and loved. Well, perhaps it does show a little age in the backstage areas, where I met the brass orchestra preparing for their evening concert. But there, the wear and tear is evidence of the venue’s success and busy programme.
The foyer, with its interior rivers, is impressively open. It may create some challenges for simultaneous events, but visually it is wonderful and connected to the water front.
The passerelles leading to the main hall balconies, and the long, almost mystical red corridors, reminded me of the very long soundlocks at the Philharmonie de Paris. A fantastic architectural trick to maintain the suspense and delaying the gratification of finally entering the hall.
The hall itself speaks of verticality and, from the fourth balcony, probably of vertigo. I was lucky enough to have tickets in the stalls and 1st balcony. From there, the hall looks grand, ceremonial.
The doors to the reverberation chambers were open, revealing mysterious red painted spaces that prolong the decay of sound in the hall. The added reverberation clearly sounds as coming from above, just above (but I understand that this can change using the lower level doors more). Definitely audible both in the stalls and on stage.
The tone is warm, as I expected, given the heavy materials (concrete doors!) and the extensive shallow diffusion throughout the hall. The room has a mellow voice while retaining enough clarity and presence.
What kept me alert during the concert? The hard seat! And also the ten snare drums perched on the edge of the stage, playing at full force and at a deafening pace. At that point, the hall certainly woke up, with the overstage canopy contributing some noticeably unusual reflections from that (unusual) stage position.
Perhaps the most spectacular part of KKL, for me, was the roof: framing the waterfront and the mountains, with a terrace overlooking the lake. It sets the tone for a very high-quality evening before the music even begins.
After 30 years, the building still looks incredibly tidy and cared for.
(There will be a follow up post on the fascinating concert I attended the next morning.)
The United Nations 🇺🇳 headquarters in Geneva is undergoing a major redevelopment of its campus, including many historically listed buildings and spaces.
Not only the Assembly Hall we regularly see on the news, but also the many rooms used for conferences, meetings, gatherings, and the support spaces behind them.
In diplomacy, bad acoustics is not an option. Poor intelligibility, excessive reverberation, intrusive noise, lack of speech privacy, or latency between the room and interpreters’ booths can all have serious consequences.
Acoustically, the work is about clarity, discretion, comfort, and reliability: reverberation control, noise control, speech privacy, and the performance of the audio systems.
It is a majestic place, where history is made every day.
A few photos from an earlier ARD site inspection with the UN engineering team.
A few years ago, 3D models of HVAC systems were almost unheard of. Two-dimensional drawings were required (plans and sections) leaving the acoustic consultant with a real puzzle to decipher… often at the very last minute, once the HVAC design was completed, documented, and transmitted.
BIM has changed the game. Even when the design is still evolving, it is now much easier to identify noise sources in the system, transmission paths, troublesome branches, and unfortunate balancing dampers. The whole system is there to be read as one builds the calculation. One plug-in later, and the entire route is mapped out, velocities checked, and ready for assessment.
There are still thousands of challenges with BIM models. One of them is the affordability of software packages. Another is the cost of training. We have heard these concerns for years, yet little has changed. Large projects still rely on the same platforms, and design teams are expected to be equipped, licensed, and proficient with the right package, the correct version, and compatible workflows.
At ARD, we invested because our projects and our clients expected it. And it has paid off: hours saved, earlier insights, and more timely advice when something “not quite right” appears between two model versions. We are far more familiar with the systems as a result, and this shows in the advice we give.
Complex systems still take time to process, and the quality of the output always depends on the quality of the input, not just the 3D model, but also the noise data behind it. Yet we can honestly say that the task has become far easier, and far clearer, than it ever was before.
I often argue that it is. Acoustics are woven into the record, the significance, and the lived experience of historical buildings. I like the idea that the notes played long ago don’t completely vanish, that the voice of a space lingers, evolved over time.
But what happens when the brief is to rebuild a long-lost concert hall, exactly as per the surviving drawings? And what if the acoustics of that historic design fall short of clients’ and community’s modern expectations?
That’s exactly when the acoustician needs to be brought in early. Before the diggers, before the builders, before the politics.
As pointed out in the comments to my previous post, the decision on whether a view is restricted in a performing arts venue often rests with the theatre consultant; a specialist tasked with making that final judgment.
This kind of expertise comes from attending many performances in a wide range of venues. It’s about recognising spatial relationships and understanding from these experiences, whether other people are likely to be annoyed every time, occasionally, or not at all.
Which makes me wonder: If the responsibility is put on someone(s) who rarely (or never) attends live performances, how can they be expected to know when a sightline might be a problem?
The Harry Clark Prize for room acoustics is named after the acoustician who, in 1919, was engaged by the Chairman of the House and Furnishing Committee of the House of Representatives in Wellington, New Zealand.
His report on the reasons why the Chamber in the new parliament building had poor acoustics is a remarkable 8-page document full of a comments and observations that are simply true. Most of these truths would be confirmed decades later by experiment. A long way ahead of his time.
My paper Recent development in Visualisations for Acoustics was awarded the inaugural paper. In the paper, I demonstrate how visualisation does not have to be static, engineered and complex. That in fact, it can speak for itself to a non-technical audience, while providing a mean to check that a concert hall design serves all sections of the orchestra. A win-win.
In the presentation, I simply emphasized the need to rethink our undecipherable reports filled with complex graphics, and instead, to reimagine how we visualize sound in performance spaces. Here is an example, with sound:
Acoustic Research & Design Ltd 