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”.
Acoustic Research & Design Ltd 