Gallery: Wuxi Wonderland

At work in a large-scale model of Perkins Eastman’s Wuxi Symphony Hall, Erik Bergal and Elspeth Wing, acousticians with Nagata Acoustics, could be cast members in a modern-day Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The model, constructed of lacquered plywood to replicate the characteristics of the space, served as a testing ground for the acousticians, who sought and solved any detrimental echoes that resulted from the geometry of the hall. By using actual sound, the acousticians were able to capture its paths and diffraction effects, which would be impractical—if not impossible—to model virtually, so down a symphonic rabbit hole they went.

The hall was tested with a “full house” because audience members and seats create a source of acoustical scattering, diffraction, and absorption. “The presence of the soft and irregular surface of the audience was important to capture as we investigated detrimental echoes,” Bergal explains. Crouched in the model, Wing was able to listen to the sound response in the hall to identify problematic reflections and tested potential interventions to eliminate them. Once confident in their solutions, the acousticians recommended modifications to the project team.

The full-sized, 1,500-seat hall, the epicenter of the one-million-square-foot Wuxi Cultural Arts Center in Wuxi, China, is slated for completion later this year. N