ACOUSTIC SOUNDS SKIN
To ensure perfect acoustics for the Grand Hall, a special material known as White Skin was developed by Yasuhisa Toyota and the architects. This means that no audience member is further than 30 m from the conductor.
The Elbphilarmonie’s Grand Hall stands 50 meters above ground level and seats 2100 “vineyard style”, where the orchestra sits in the middle of the auditorium, with the rows of seats rising up in steep tiers. 120,000 m² (equates to approximately 17 football pitches) 200,000 tons (equates to approximately 416,666 grand pianos, 722 Airbus A-380s or 2.5 Queen Mary cruise ships) Finally, why is your work important?īecause my work impacts people’s enjoyment of music. As part of that project, I measured and tested the sound quality and its distribution on an exact 1:10 model of the Grand Hall. What’s your latest project?Įlbphilharmonie in Hamburg, which was completed at the end of 2016 and inaugurated in January 2017. The concert hall discussion is quite complicated and this is exactly why it’s so interesting. However, the good modern halls do have one advantage in that they are much more suitable for the large ensembles – for example, for performances of the works of Mahler, Bruckner, Wagner, Stravinsky and Shostakovich. They are still up there with the best in the world. I actually don’t think that modern concert halls have acoustically exceeded the good historical concert halls and I don’t think that the acoustic quality of the historical halls is diminished because of the modern halls. The situation for concert halls is different. For example, the CD was thought to be the ideal media when it first appeared, but then they developed the ‘super’ CD and so it goes on. But, I think this is mostly a reaction against highly advanced technology which, even though it’s highly advanced, is still not perfect. Yes, there are some people who are going back to buying vinyl records. Could this be true of modern concert halls – that the sound, although acoustically perfect, can appear too clinical? More and more people are, for example, returning to buying vinyl records, as they believe that the quality achieved through technology takes away the soul of the performance. This is also true of other concert halls, for example, those in Amsterdam and Berlin. In my opinion, part of the reason that The Musikverein is so renowned is its superb resident orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic. For example, although technology has become an essential part of modern concert hall design, many would still refer to The Musikverein, built on Vienna’s Ringstrasse in 1870, as the best concert hall in the world. Acoustics cannot be judged independently or singled out from other factors, such as the musician(s), the program and so on – the acoustic experience is personal and varies depending on the whole package. You can’t single out the world’s best acoustics. In your opinion, where can you experience the best acoustics in the world or the most remarkable acoustic effect? And, as long as we work with music in mind, I don’t think the artistic nature of the job will ever disappear. Nothing would be possible in acoustical design without the computer technologies developed during the last twenty years. How has technology, for example, computer simulation, changed the way you work? Do you think it takes away some of the artistic nature of the job? Personally I think that instinct and technology complement each other, so there is no winner. 
More than 1,000 curved window panels capture and reflect the color of the sky, the sun’s rays, the water and the city, turning the concert hall into a gigantic crystal Does your gut instinct or experience ever conflict with technology? If so, what wins? If by building acoustics, you mean room acoustics or room acoustical design, then I would say that that is closely related to art because there’s always the music to consider, and music is definitely art.
Having been responsible for acoustics in a number of high-profile, successful concert halls around the world, I can reveal that the secret of my success is good and deep communication with my project colleagues, especially the architects. Some architects are very aware of the importance of acoustics others are much more interested in architectural design. The design process varies depending on the project, or indeed the architect. You obviously enjoy working closely with architects, but is design ever prioritized over acoustic quality? Yasuhisa Toyota, President of Nagata Acoustics America Inc.
0 kommentar(er)
