Concert Halls as Nearly Adaptive Spaces

Abstract

Concert halls have led to increasingly complex spaces that cannot be thought of as static ‘containers’ anymore. This complexity makes them viable to be launched towards industry 4.0 and to be considered a function of the activities that they can provide during their life cycle. They are characterized by dynamic objects that contain sophisticated sub-systems and add to the capability to influence both environmental variables and user behavior. This article explains an adaptive concert hall at an early stage, in which a network of sensors that gather real-time data on environmental factors such as temperature, air humidity and air velocity are considered, focusing on their direct and indirect intercorrelations with the acoustic quantities to optimize the room acoustic response. The proposed methodology is controlled by a digital twin (DT) based on building information modeling (BIM), integrated with sensors, actuators, and acoustic measurements and algorithms. By analyzing the data, algorithms identify patterns, and an autonomous fine-tune setting is achieved, including the novelty for which a natural variable acoustic field becomes possible during a musical execution without the use of any electroacoustic system support. The hall becomes a natural active instrument to be included in the composer’s score. A case study is presented.

Keywords

• digital twin
• air quality
• architectural acoustics
• variability of room acoustic parameters
• acoustic automation