Designing for the performing arts: An historical overview

Abstract

A relationship developed historically between the acoustics of different auditorium types and corresponding styles of musical composition. This resulted from the composer's intuitive awareness of room acoustics, and from the architect's limited knowledge, based on trial and error, of the acoustic performance of building materials and room shapes in providing for different purposes. Except where composers have had auditoria specifically designed for their own music, this relationship became tenuous in the present century when the musical repertoire broadened and when nonmusical criteria came to dominate the design process. An auditorium's success now depends on the initial selection of acoustical and other criteria in relation to the building's defined purpose and on the translation of acoustic theory into three-dimensional form. These factors together determine the audience-performer relationship and the shape and dimensions of the enclosing surfaces. Historical examples illustrate early attempts to project theory into built form, and others from the present day describe the problem of integrating opposing acoustic demands.