Featured in the September 2015 issue of Interior Design is our project for Insight Venture Partners with Smith Maran Architecture. This 32,000 square foot corporate interior in the Grace Building combines “the seriousness of finance” with a “downtown groove”, while paying homage to the building’s famous convex white travertine facade. Acoustic privacy and sound quality were paramount given the sensitivity of venture capital negotiation, and the project included fitness and game room areas requiring unique acoustic treatments.
Sight of sound
Your eardrum converts the motion of the air into something you can hear, but what if everything around you could work the same way? In a recent TED Talk, MIT researcher Abe Davis demonstrates cutting edge research into extracting audio from silent video of everyday objects exposed to sound. Using high-speed video equipment and even a consumer-level camera, he extracts intelligible music and speech just by watching a nearby houseplant or a snack bag—the proverbial “fly on the wall”. Acknowledging the surveillance possibilities (which were already feasible using lasers), the research pushes beyond audio to expose the natural modal movement of an object by simply ensonifying it and recording what happens, allowing one to push, pull, and shake something virtually without ever touching it.
The Institute takes the floor
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate was dedicated this week at a ceremony attended by the President, Vice President, the Kennedy family, and former colleagues of the Senator, with coverage on Meet the Press. The Institute is adjacent to the JFK Library on the University of Massachusetts Boston campus and includes classrooms, exhibit space, and a full size replica of the United States Senate chamber. Working with Rafael Viñoly Architects, we helped the building architectural and mechanical designs achieve acoustic environments conducive to speech intelligibility, learning, productivity, and reflection. The Institute opens to the public on March 31, 2015—see you there!
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!
acoustics puzzler….
what is 70 dB on the outside but totally silent inside?
Hudson views
Architectural Digest recently featured one of our residential projects, a home overlooking the Hudson River in upstate New York. Designed by architecture & design firm BWArchitects for a private client, the house occupies property farmed by architect Basil Walters’ own grandparents for over 50 years, which he recounts visiting as a young man. The design is informed both by the landscape and by the architect’s experiences there, and includes a dedicated listening room with carefully controlled acoustics.