Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts
This project was done in collaboration with our good friends at Soundpace Vision. John O’Keefe was responsible for the noise control design and Bob Essert of Soundspace Vision was responsible for the overall design.
The Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts was the first opera house in the world to achieve the coveted noise control design known as N-1. This means that the ambient noise in the opera house is as quiet as the threshold of human hearing. At some frequencies even quieter.
This may sound like a mundane engineering issue but it is fundamental for the performers on the stage and in the pit. It frees artistic expression by expanding their dynamic range. We compare it to replacing a visual artist’s dirty canvas with a clean white one.
