Posts Tagged ‘music’

Acoustics center stage

As acoustical consultants, we’re often forced to work around extraneous noise. Especially in New York, trying to measure something that is quiet can be frustrating when it’s surrounded by things that are loud. While this tends to be unavoidable here, the New York Times features this piece on an acoustic task that was too important for interference: the digital cataloging of a Stradivarius collection in Cremona, Italy.

By building a model of samples and tones from each instrument, the project hopes to preserve their sound indefinitely even after the instruments degrade. But because the sounds are too subtle to withstand any extraneous noise, city activity and traffic around the Museo del Violino is completely suspended during recording, an unprecedented precaution only possible since the Stradivarius is the signature sound of Cremona. That level of control would be nice for our own work, but city noise is the signature sound of New York!

Spotify spotted

Spotify’s 54,000 square foot expansion to their Flatiron office was recently featured in Contract Magazine. Continuing our long collaboration with Spotify and TPG Architecture, we strove to meet the client’s acoustical performance needs within the highly-customized, uniquely-curated aesthetic design. Filled with one-of-a-kind art and furniture and avoiding the typical “design tropes of startups and tech firms”, the open squad-based workspace also includes a cafe, lounge, library, wellness rooms, and a fabrication workshop.

It’s getting kind of hectic

Those tremors you feel in your high-rise building may not be an earthquake.  Ten minutes of violent shaking in a 39-story Seoul skyscraper were attributed in 2011 to “17 middle-aged people” doing Tae Bo to “The Power” by early 1990s German hitmakers Snap!

Every building has its own natural resonances that can be excited by rhythmic activity.  In most buildings these resonances are relatively docile and hard to excite, but when wide structural spans and thin slabs lead to a low natural frequency, it doesn’t take many kickboxers to get things…kind of hectic.

Pandora design awarded

Our office interior project for Pandora Media with ABAstudio continues to earn recognition from the architecture community, recently winning an Award of Merit from AIA New York State to add to its prior accolades.  We are glad to have been able to contribute to the project and grateful for the recognition!

AIA Award of Merit for Pandora Media

Pandora’s media

We recently completed a fun and “musical” office interior for Pandora Media in Midtown Manhattan in conjunction with ABA Studio.  The project was recently featured on both ArchDaily and Architizer, as their Project of the Day.  Congratulations to the project team and we wish Pandora Media sweet sounds in their new space!

Pandora Media NYC

But I know what I hear

This week, New York’s Museum of Modern Art is opening its first major exhibition of sound art, “Soundings: A Contemporary Score”.  Through November 3rd, visitors will be able to immerse themselves in auditory pieces designed by sixteen of the most innovative contemporary artists working with sound.

Forty-Part Motet

Not to be outdone, on September 10th the Metropolitan Museum of Art will present Janet Cardiff’s “Forty-Part Motet”, pictured above.  This first foray into sound by the Met (to be installed in Fuentidueña Chapel at The Cloisters) combines forty separately-recorded voices from forty loudspeakers into a 16th century choral ensemble, a synthesis that the New York Times notes has brought visitors to tears.  The Times also provides audio clips from the MOMA exhibition, noting that “while you can close your eyes to an image you hate, you can’t close your ears to a noise”—a risk without a parallel in the visual arts.