Each Thursday Acoustic Dimensions’ New York office gets together for lunch.  Not just any lunch, but a time when people can share lessons learned on projects, explore technical challenges and recommend operational improvements.  While in some firms, this is a top-down exercise, in our New York office this is a grassroots event.  The idea is to make sure we aren’t working in silos and to facilitate cross-pollination of ideas.

Recently, we took the lunch session online so that members of the team who were traveling could still be part.  Not only that, but AD’s other offices are invited to join in. While it isn’t new, the power of technology to erase geography still manages to impress us.  If only it could pass the mustard.

On Thursday afternoon the San Diego office of Acoustic Dimensions, took time out over lunch to drive up to Mt. Helix in search of the contrail that would be produced by a historic missile launch. The official spy satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, over 250 miles to the North of San Diego.  It is hailed as the largest rocket launched from the west coast and carried a classified defense satellite.  The 235-foot-tall Delta 1V Heavy Launch Vehicle lifted off at 1:10 pm. As the booster rose into the sky and raced over the Pacific Ocean toward outer-space, our San Diego team was able to witness the contrail from this beautiful viewpoint.

But being in the “sound business”, it is always a fascinating concept when one realizes that in most cases – there is simply no sound in outer-space.  There are sound sources (e.g. explosion of stars, collision of asteroids, solar storms and so on) but they do not travel to be detected as how we hear sound on earth. Space being a nearly perfect vacuum, means sound waves cannot travel from its vibrating source through the vacuum to another point in space or to the ear of an individual. In order to hear sound, it must travel through a medium (solid, liquid or gas) by making their molecules vibrate.  So do not be fooled the next time you see a space movie where you can hear the loud explosion of a planet, a spaceship engine or the firing of a gun. Sound just does not travel in space. It is silent!

During what should have been a “slow” week in the Dallas office, David Stephens, Russell Reid and Jason Foster implemented a few projects. 

They installed RGB LED wall glaze strip fixtures inside the “fizz wall” of one of our conference rooms.  The controls are programmed for a number of different looks.  (They lit them red and green for our Christmas party).

They installed an LED wall wash fixture to light the wall behind our new water feature. (Which was a housewarming gift from our New York office.)

And—probably their favorite project—they installed a pipe grid in the tech conference room, which will allow for testing of different fixtures and other equipment.  

We often laugh that we have way too many photos of our team hanging from ladders, but we are very glad that they do.  And are especially grateful that they use their skills not only for our clients but for our own space, too.

In 1992, Craig Janssen and Vance Breshears—armed with dreams and a credit card—looked for office space convenient to both downtown and the airport.  They selected a little non-descript gray building (mostly because it offered month-by-month leases) and began the Dallas office of Acoustic Dimensions. 

Those who were part of AD ‘back in the day’ remember the other tenants…like the garage band that rehearsed evenings in the back corner, the limousine drivers who wore leather jackets even in 100 degree summers and the cigar smoking men on the telephones (who may possibly have been running a scam if the police raid was any indication).  What we didn’t realize at the time was that eventually the building would be purchased by our current landlord and the other tenants asked to leave.  And that we would renovate the humble home we started in—adding a wing suited to us instead of the disconnected offices and hallways we took over as we grew. 

This week, we watched as the building we grew up in was leveled to become parking for the newer buildings on either side of it.  (Including the one we live in now.)  It is an odd thing to watch how quickly a building can come down—especially since we know how much goes into building one up. And even though there is no comparison between the space we are in now with the one we were in before, we still found ourselves a bit nostalgic at its passing.

It isn’t uncommon for members of our team to go to lunch together.  It also isn’t uncommon for lunch conversations to drift to the theoretical side of our work. 

Earlier this week, two of our consultants were speaking with admiration of one of their mentors.  They said things like “They don’t make acousticians like that anymore. He was old-school.”  The conversation drifted to the way acoustics was done years ago and how things had changed.  There is a perception that “back then” acousticians had to rely on their own ingenuity and experience, because there were no computer programs to rely on.  After all, when Nicholas Edwards began his first studies for the Meyerson Symphony Hall in Dallas, he used bits of string and push pins to physically map the sound paths—which helped him determine where to place the walls.

With all the technology available to us these days, it is still the fundamental laws of physics that dictate what we do.  (Though even acousticians might have to take a step back to remind themselves periodically that F=MA.)  Most acousticians—even those of us fully immersed in technology—agree that there is no substitute for experience.  Because in addition to the practical physics, there are still elements that are subjective.  After all, at the end of the day it is all about how the client experiences sound within the space, be it stanzas of a symphony or something less glamorous like plumbing noise traveling through walls.  

Over the weekend our team came in and  set up computers, unloaded red crates and made sure that we would be fully functional this morning.  While we still have some crates left to unload (and there have been a ton of requests for Allen wrenches today as we put together additional purchases from IKEA) we are surprisingly settled in our individual work areas and community space.

Over the following weeks, the conference rooms will be fitted out and the contractors will finish their punch lists.  Already we are experiencing the benefits of some of the LEED strategies.  With daylight to more than 90% of the workstations, the space feels really great.  Not only that, but the low VOC materials made it easy to move in even as contractors were still finishing the back stairway and first floor.

The best part of the new space is that we all have our own bit of sweat equity—which makes it feel like our own.

Labor Day Weekend was the kick-off for the San Diego office renovation project!  With our team in Dallas busy getting ready to move into their new facility (just  across the street from the current location), the guys in San Diego have started construction to re-model the Acoustic Dimensions San Diego office location.  Plans include a new HVAC system, upgrades to the infrastructure, new paint and fixtures, new lighting, new furniture and new signage!  

As of September 20^th, the Dallas office will be relocating to a new building across the street.  And watching the project come together has been somewhat amazing.

To understand how meaningful this is for us, we need to highlight that our Dallas office began in the building we currently reside in.  Craig Janssen and Vance Breshears rented space here when it was a simple rent- by-the-month office space.  Over time, we took over more and more of the building until there was no room for other monthly tenants.   When we had completely outgrown the space without hope for further renovation, we began looking for something new when our landlord approached us with the possibility of renovating his previous headquarters which was right across the street.

We called in Beck Architecture to provide the design—with a lot of input from our in-house designers.  And we also decided to pursue LEED—which has been an adventure all its own.

As we come closer to move-in date, things are snapping into place quickly.  From our vantage point across the street, we get to see the progress clearly.  Soon, we will begin sending out moving notices.  (Which seems a little funny since it is only a one digit change.  Instead of 15505 Wright Brothers Drive, we will now be 15508.)

AD’s Dallas office is meeting today to talk about social networking and virtual teaming.  In fact, we took this photo live and used it for the demonstration.