For this mid-rise tenant improvement project, the opportunity to create a facade, or identity for our client’s company existed primarily in the reception area. Because one whole wall of the reception space is left in the language of the existing building, and the existing suspended ceiling is removed, the architectural components inserted read as facades of several small buildings existing in the "neutral" space. Thus, individual aspects of the program are articulated through small architectural events. Further, in the same way that sound waves propagate by oscillating or vibrating while suspended in the air, one can imagine those waves resulting in the acoustical levitation of floating ceiling panels and the sculpted undulating wall forms that begin to articulate and organize the programmatic components for the recording of sound.

 

 

The long wall that one passes through to enter into the reception area becomes, when one turns around to sit on the couch, the facade to the enterprise as a whole. The wall changes in form along its length to become a display for awards - for all intents and purposes the signage for the company. At either end of the space, new architectural elements suspended from the ceiling act as facades for each sound studio. The receptionist is given his or her own small building. The effect of the whole is somewhat like a small Italian piazza: one feels as though they are sitting outside, waiting to enter into a more interior space at the proper time. This sequencing leads one to experience the sound studios as having an especially high degree of interiority, a feeling complemented by the hushed ambient sound of an acoustically dead environment.