Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc were awarded the 2010 CCFC Professional Design Award of Honor under the Growth Category, for the American River College Fine Arts Expansion project. Working collaboratively with HGA, Acoustic Dimensions developed some exciting music performance, rehearsal and instructional spaces. The 54,000 SF expansion accommodates the fast growing theater and music departments, and includes a new black box theatre, choral rehearsal/ recital room, instrumental rehearsal room, and a recording studio suite.   American River College is designed to meet LEED certification standards.

The Instrumental Rehearsal Room and Choral Rehearsal/Recital Room are exciting new architectural expressions that incorporate some of the key acoustical features essential for the success of these new spaces such as:

• Generous room height/room volume.
• A series of lower suspended ceiling elements.
• A wall soffit that wraps around the room.
• Adjustable acoustics elements (retractable curtains that are also used for light control).
• Wall shaping close to the musicians to prevent flutter echo and promote a more even sound field in the area where the musicians play. 

Working with an interdisciplinary group of consultants requires a lot of knowledge-sharing. If you are truly committed to not working in silos, you have to make sure that each person becomes well-educated outside of their areas of expertise.  The challenge to that goal is that we are required to take extremely complex ideas and make them easy to understand. 

Recently, Vance Breshears—who leads our San Diego office and teaches acoustics at the New School of Architecture—was asked about acoustics. Vance explained that when it comes right down to it, a good way to summarize acoustics is that it comes down to anything you want to hear versus anything you don’t want to hear.  This makes the acoustic design process a science of plusses and minuses.

Sound Isolation, noise and vibration control work primarily on the minus side: decreasing HVAC noise, traffic noise, sound from adjacent spaces, the hum of machinery… reducing or isolating these noises are important for making room for what it is you want to hear.

Room acoustics works on the plus side by improving how much sound reaches your ears versus the sounds you don’t want to hear.  Early reflected sounds help to reinforce the direct sound and improve clarity and intelligibility.  The work of room acoustics on the minus side focuses on minimizing late arriving reflections that are perceived as an echo, controlling buildup of bass energy, etc.

When people talk about acoustics, there is usually much made of the testing and measurements in the room.  And while measurements are a useful tool and enable us to quantify certain characteristics, much of acoustics is actually the subjective answer to the question: what do you want to hear?

This subjectivity is the reason “good acoustics” can never be defined outside of a clear program.  After all, what makes an organ sound wonderful may render speech unintelligible. And a well-controlled room that sounds fantastic for amplified concerts may feel completely dead for congregational participation.

In the final analysis, often the best acoustical analysis tool is the ear-brain combination of someone who is trained to ask the right questions about the program, then able to discern where the conflicts are that are causing the “noise” that should be subtracted and the “sound” that should be added.  Then it is simply about the strategies to achieve the right balance of addition and subtraction.

One of the things that makes Acoustic Dimensions special is the deep passion some of our acousticians have for the music.  We were recently speaking with David Kahn about his New Years Eve experience…

“There is so much good music performed on New Year’s Eve.  Some of my favorite music that is often performed New Year’s Eve is the Bach Brandenburg Concertos.  My favorite venue for this music is a floating barge that is tied up in Brooklyn near the Brooklyn Bridge.  After you have heard this music performed in this venue, it all of a sudden makes sense.  The experience of hearing this music in this very intimate venue is completely different than the experience of hearing this music in a large concert hall or large church,” he explains.

The thing about  Barge Music is that they have a piano but no harpsichord.  While the venue is just right for the Brandenburg concertos, David felt that the music didn’t sound right when performed with a piano. 

So, in a plan to make sure that the concertos could be heard as intended, David arranged for and financed the rental of a harpsichord for this New Year’s Eve’s concert which included 5 of the 6 of Bach’s Brandenburg concertos, plus a Bach concerto for oboe and violin. 

“I called Mark Peskanov, the executive and artistic director of Barge Music a few months ago to discuss the New Year’s Eve concert.  We have been talking about doing this for several years, but by the time I think about it and contact Mark, it is too late to change gears.  This year, after a similar conversation, Mark called me back and said ‘let’s do it for this year.’  The result was spectacular.”