Acoustics The architecture of Hall One emerged from a collaboration between Dixon Jones and Arup’s acousticians. As part of the research that preceded the design, the developer, the architects, the engineers and the project manager visited Japan to look in detail at a dozen concert halls. In each hall, the acoustic engineer would send the project manager onto the stage to pop a balloon (a convenient portable source of non-directional sound), while he recorded the acoustic result. The aim was to differentiate very precisely between a variety of modern concert halls and to examine what solution would best meet the requirements of Kings Place. Next, a computer model of the proposed Kings Place auditorium was made. This was tested against computer models of the Concertgebouw, the Wigmore and several other halls. In this way, it was possible to optimise the design for Hall One before construction began. The result is a concert hall with the flexibility to vary the acoustic to meet the demands of classical chamber music and of many other kinds of music, as well as speech.
