Inside the Architect’s Mind

Dick Letts interviews Barry McGregor, architect of the new Sydney Conservatorium building

The new building for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music has been completed on its traditional and
historic site where the central business district and the Royal Botanic Gardens meet. This was a
controversial project which ran into vigorous opposition from heritage groups who wanted the
Conservatorium to realise its plans elsewhere. But the site also is home to a long musical heritage
which has been sustained and invigorated by what all seem to agree is an absolutely splendid new
facility.

The design exposes for the first time in decades the northern and eastern facades of the original
Conservatorium building, commissioned by Governor Macquarie in 1817 as stables and servants
quarters and designed by convict architect Francis Greenway. To achieve this, the new additions are
built within a large excavation and located under two extensively landscaped terraces. Although they
are hardly in evidence visually, there are around 600 rooms, including six substantial public performing
spaces, studios, practice rooms, ensemble and seminar rooms, offices and service rooms and a large
library. The cost was $145 million, with still some to find for aspects of the fit-out. This is more than
double the publicised estimate at the inception of the project in 1997.
The objective was to build a world-class facility - an already ambitious aim - complicated in many
ways by the particularities of the site. Music Forum took this as a good opportunity to discover how a
fine architect would go about designing such a building. The leading architect for the design team,
Barry McGregor of Daryl Jackson Robin Dyke Architects, Sydney, agreed to be interviewed.
Note that these brackets: ( ) indicate a summarising of Barry’s comments. These brackets [ ] indicate
editorial explanation.
The assignment
Is there a simple way of describing the assignment as it was given to you?
It is simple, in that we took on a project that had been commenced by the NSW Department of Public
Works with the NSW Government Architect. We became involved following the development
application being lodged, and to take over the architectural and engineering design role.

So what was the given?

So the concept was in place… The given was that a very large building was to be built around
Greenway’s stables building, stripping away the additions that had been built there in the 1960’s and
70’s. Verbrugghen Hall was to be changed immensely in that original scheme and there were other
facilities like a small opera theatre - with a fly-tower and a visitor’s centre for the Royal Botanic
Gardens at the top terrace level. The building was somewhat larger than you find it today. We took on
the development of the scheme, responding to the comments from the City Council, from the pressure
groups, and the issues associated with the budget at that time. Those things led over a period of 3 or 4
months to extensive changes to the detailed brief, the relationship of rooms and educational units, and
the structure of the building. We analysed the brief and the constraints working closely with Edward
McCue of Kirkegaard and Associates - the teams acoustic engineers from the United States – drawing
on his extensive understanding of acoustics, musicians and facilities for music education. Ed worked
out of our office for most of the project and we developed a very strong relationship between architect
and acoustician. Ed has extensive skills in communicating with musicians and the teachers and together
we put together ideas and options to deal with the technical and budget issues - which were always
difficult throughout the project. All of this was a long time before the finding of the first brick dish
drain. [The discovery of a buried dirt roadway and drains dating back to around the 1820s caused major
political agitation to have the project cancelled.]

Was it always the concept that the original Greenway stables building would not be obscured by the
new buildings?
Yes. One of the arguments put about the project coming to this site was that it should have the
advantage of freeing the Greenway building from the later additions [built along the northern and
eastern facades in the 60s and 70s] and letting it be seen more in the round. And the end result is that
the building is seen very easily on three sides and our metal and glass foyer structure comes up to it
respectfully on the south side.
Yes… So the corollary is that much of the Conservatorium is sort of underground.
I think the building closest to this one in concept that is Parliament House in Canberra, where the top of
the hill was lifted off, the building was constructed in the hole, and then earth put back on to re-form
the hill on the top. So effectively the building is ‘under-the-ground’ by the fact that we put the ground
for the gardens back on its roof.

Yes (chuckle)
It is mostly under-the-ground as we normally see it on the west and south side. Most of the eastern side
is sitting in the ground a little, and it receives daylight from clever devices – courtyards and skylights.
But, um, I think of it not as an underground building but as a covered building.
Another major part of our task was how to deal with the railway lines that run through the site in the
area we call the eastern terrace. [There are two underground railway tunnels along the eastern
periphery – on the city circle route. They have long caused ‘rumble’ problems – regenerated noise from
rock-borne vibration - for the Conservatorium.] That terrace has most of the studios in it. We had one
architectural team working on the east and northern zones – the zones containing the studios and the
high school.
The high school in the original design spread over several levels and into the Greenway building. We
took it out of there and placed it all on two levels in the northern section of the building. That was an
important strategy to give it a separate identity and separate access to avoid crossovers between the
school kids and university students in the foyer and corridors.
Another important planning change came from the Conservatorium management team who advised
that they didn’t want the Greenway building to become an "administration ghetto". I will always
remember those words. We were able to take the administration for the high school and the Con out of
the ring of rooms around Verbrugghen Hall and put them closer to the teaching spaces, the musicians
and the gardens. That freed up important spaces for music. A very strong idea was to place four fine
small ensemble rooms around the Verbrugghen Hall.

These are rehearsal rooms…

They are 55 square meters and able to accommodate small groups of musicians, but they can also
double up as green rooms, as warm-up rooms, as places for musicians in a large orchestra to place their
instruments or even to dress or prepare to go on stage. The practice organ has gone into one of these
rooms, so that the two organs have some relationship on the same level [the other organ being the
restored Pogson organ in the concert hall] and I believe great use will come out of those four rooms.

Are they acoustically isolated?

Yes, they are. They also have windows onto the foyer and gardens that give them great character.
Also, within Greenway, is located the Access Centre. Visitors entering the complex for evening and
weekend events are close to the Access Centre. One goes there first, and then is sent off to find the
studio, seminar room, practice room, or the ensemble room or the jazz group or hall you are allocated
for the day.
Then upstairs within the Greenway building, are located the voice studios, a section of administration
and the student union office.
Verbrugghen Hall
Since we’re in the Greenway, maybe we can deal with the performing space there. You have the old
Verbrugghen Hall which is now only one of a number of performing spaces, but the largest and most
splendid. You’ve done some things there to change the acoustics, I think?
Yes. The Greenway building was the Government Stables built between 1817 and 1820, commissioned
by Governor Macquarie, using the first Colonial Architect, Francis Greenway. It was to be part of a
complex of buildings including a very large Government House, to be built to the south east of the
stables but was never realised… Verbrugghen Hall was designed by Seymour Wells, built within the
stables courtyard and completed in 1915. As a war time building it was not extravagent and quite
simple in its form and decoration.
The conservatorium that we knew was entered through the centre of its western façade - and the hall
was entered directly from the lobby and through the side doors from ramped corridors. In the new Hall,
that has been changed dramatically. One of the important strategies was to recover the four main
lobbies from Seymour Wells’ 1914 design which are in front of Greenway’s great arches; they are
clearly expressed in the building now and you see them both from the outside and the inside – where
the original fabric is exposed.

The great arches being the arches over the doors through which the horses entered and exited?
Exactly. So they were the entrances and exits for the carts, horses, cows, servants and carriages…

Anything that was staying overnight…

Exactly…into the stables courtyard through the gates. So Wells used this very strongly in his design.
These lobbies were lost to infills for classrooms and toilets over the years and have been recovered in
this redevelopment. The lobbies are two storeys high again and have natural light from skylights and
large scale steel and glass bays. They are the way the audience enters and exits Verbrugghen Hall –
from the western end – and from the eastern end they provide the back of house lobbies for the
performers to assemble and enter and exit the stage platform and choir stalls - and link up the backstage
areas. They are fine spaces; 6 or 7 metres high, containing steel and timber stairs to access the upper
level – and there’s lots of light in them. At night they glow like large lanterns. I think that will be a
very nice part of approaching this building in the evening - to see those arches silhouetted by the back
lighting from the lobbies
The hall itself has always been railway affected. It has large, thick masonry walls built on rock, and
hence are unable to be entirely [acoustically] disonnected or isolated. But one of the tasks we took on
was to look at ways to isolate the floor. The original scheme was to dig down 7 or 8 metres into the
rock and build a new hall isolated from railway noise on its own acoustic protection.

Sort of floating within the original shell.

Within the shell and lowered, so it had a lot of height, with a floor of practice rooms on the top. If you
can imagine doing that, you would have had direct access from the lower levels of the foyer into it. [A
new foyer has been sunk two floors below ground level right along the northern side of the Greenway
building.] For cost and heritage reasons - and for some practical engineering reasons - that scheme was
abandoned and we were briefed to bring it back to ground level and to make the current hall work.
There were several schemes developed for the hall, and the funds available were extremely tight. Then
following demolition, when excavation was underway in the hall, pre-Greenway archaeology was
found right in the centre of the hall, under the front of our stage.

What do you mean, pre-Greenway?

There was a bakery on the site.

You’re kidding!
So we were looking at remnants of structures built the 1790s - just before 1800.

Gosh…
So these are very early remains for Sydney. I think there’s only a couple of others that date that far
back. This is what is called highly significant fabric. We had to look at how we could keep them and
achieve our goals. At that stage we decided to reverse the air conditioning -– it was to be bottom-up air
conditioning through the seats, which is the best way to handle a hall like this –

That’s what you’ve done in the other performing spaces…

Exactly. We decided to make it top-down and that way we didn’t have to excavate further. We floated
the concrete floor over the archeology – it’s still there, and is not interfered with.

Visible?
Yes, but restricted access only. For example, a group of archeology students could be taken there, but it
has to be arranged with the building managers and the Conservatorium.
We floated the new slab on rubber pads to de-couple it to reduce the rock-borne railway noise and took
the air supply up into the roof space. This required extensive puncturing of the timber ceiling which we
had previously determined to retain and add mass to try to give some of the qualities of a European
hall. It was resolved to place the mass just under the roof tiles….in form of a new precast concrete
planks on new trusses to create a sound-proof shell where you should no longer hear the mowers in the
garden, the traffic in the streets, or the birds twittering… And because we were doing that and
puncturing the timber ceiling we recommended removal of the horizontal ceiling boards and insertion
of fine stainless steel mesh.

Changing the height..…

…considerably increasing the height and acoustic volume in the room – increasing the length of travel
for sound, passing through the mesh to then reflect from a massive concrete element to send that sound
back - rather than being absorbed (or ‘sucked out’ is the term often used by Kirkegaard) by the wooden
boards - a big issue for music in this room. Different people have commented that it was a fine space
for piano, or delicate music, although it depended very much upon where you were sitting.
Kirkegaard and Associates advised very early on in the project that with the original balcony retained a
hall to world’s-best-practice would not be achieved. So removal of the balcony was inevitable, and
removal of the horizontal timber ceiling was an important bonus. We put mesh back in the ceiling
plane - this was seen by the Heritage Council as an important reflection of the original volume as it was
– and so that the audience have a memory of the space. The fine stainless steel mesh lets the sound pass
through to the slab, and reflect back down again. So we get a more reverberant room by providing hard
finishes on the floor and the concrete slab up at the roof, and the ceiling hardly interfering. The mesh is
very interesting. From below, it has a solidity to it. When you go and stand in the ceiling space on the
lighting catwalks, you see everything – it’s such a fine mesh.

You have a shape in the peaked roof, then, of two diagonally sloping surfaces, which would be rather
unusual in a concert hall, wouldn’t it?
Well… many concert halls have above their decorative skin quite different shapes. The Opera House
has very strong geometric shapes….

But it doesn’t have a mesh that allows the sound to go straight through to them.
Correct. It is not the same as it has a heavy timber ‘shell’, but other halls have varying roof shapes
above the ceiling. The new concrete roof in Verbrugghen, is shaped to follow the hipped roof, and has
certain planes that will send the signal much more directly back to the performers which was one
potential problem considered by Kirkegaard. The plane above the stage was seen as perhaps more
problematic than others. We designed plasterboard walls in the roof in some locations to intercept the
sound before it got to the tight acute angled corners. During the acoustic commissioning process in
Verbrugghen the Kirkegaard team will play different sized orchestras, varying amounts of energy will
be put out, and they will make adjustments in the absorption by the use of motor driven banners (or
vellum curtains) to produce the best possible acoustics for different purposes. In addition, because have
an accessible catwalk system up in the roof for access for stage lighting, there is the ability to add
sound reflectors and absorbers if necessary – quite inexpensive ones. They might be sheets of plywood
simply hung within the roof space at the consultants’ direction, to short-circuit some of the sound
reaching the slab. Another way would be to provide tensioned sheets of fabric as reflectors which
would be very easy to install. So we have a technical level within the roof space for lighting, speakers,
air conditioning and any later acoustic treatment that might be considered as necessary. It provides
flexibility…

And totally invisible to the audience.

Yes, but only just above this thin mesh. It’s really interesting when you are in that space.

You also lengthened the space.

Right. The room was made higher, and longer, but was never able to be made wider because of the
structure. By making it longer and pushing it back within the Greenway ring, we were able to be free of
the original balcony and to install the horseshoe balcony. The hall is a single volume now, not a split
volume, and at the same time the balconies surround the space with the audience. The balcony doesn’t
yield a large number of seats but it does yield a very interesting space for making music in and some
very fine seats. Also in its use as a university teaching facility, you can stand a lot of people around the
edges for special events, and that should make some very interesting pageants. There are side galleries
downstairs as well as upstairs. At Larry Kirkegaard’s suggestion we installed timber benches there,
which are quite high. The kids can lean against them, or prop themselves up to view over the heads of
the people who are seated.
It’s a very large stage, because it’s predominantly for teaching. All of the facilities in this building are
designed primarily for teaching……

And it will take a large orchestra.

A large orchestra (100 piece) can perform in the space, with an audience of 540 – which includes the
40 choir seats The brief is not focused on the audience - it is very focused on the performers on the
stage. I think what we’ve made is a very fine hall - its size is more like a recital hall, but the stage is
sized like a concert hall albeit on the limit, for width…
Catching the train noise
Now, although you’ve dug around the outside of the original Greenway building and it now sits on a
sort of pedestal, it’s sitting on the same sandstone as the railway sits on. You’ve floated the floor of
Verbrugghen Hall, but you haven’t floated the walls.
We’ve floated the instrument store, the stage, and the auditorium floor on pads 200 by 200 by 50mm
deep to mitigate as much as possible the railway noise. We were unable to isolate the thick masonry
walls, which are still coupled to the rock. So what’s called ‘rumble’, or rock-borne vibration
transmission, is not able to be removed entirely – especially when the room is being made much quieter
through other sound isolation measures. But all through the eastern zones of the complex – those rail
effected - we are designing with two things in mind: a certain degree of isolation versus a certain
amount of inherent imposed noise within the spaces - background noise like air conditioning and
general people noise. So in each space, including Verbrugghen, we’ve designed to achieve a certain
goal – established in a process of collaboration between clients, acoustician, vibration isolation
consultant (Wilkinson Murray) and Jackson Dyke (the architects). An observer with highly trained
ears, especially in very quiet conditions (say 3 am) will hear what the trains are doing all through this
building. There is no ability to isolate entirely; it is mitigation and managing expectations of noise and
doing it at all times within defined economies.
So we have the Verbrugghen floor isolated on rubber pads; we have two whole rooms isolated, on high
performance springs…

They’re the recital halls…

Yes, the Recital Halls. We have the Music Workshop [the music theatre space] on rubber pads. Then
the whole eastern side of the Conservatorium is on rubber pads – the area constructed to span over the
top of the railway lines. The inner railway track (the City Circle line) is itself partly treated for isolation
over a 300m length; it’s on devices called ‘Cologne Eggs’, and that is to minimise the vibration that
goes from the steel wheels on the steel track into the rock. But the outer track has no isolation, much of
the vibration we’re dealing with is coming from the outer track.

Why did you not treat that one?

We’ve never had the resources to treat the tracks. That measure is still available to be carried out. In
fact, I believe State Rail are looking to isolate all of their City Circle tracks on a new resilient
mounting. As you know, almost all of our theatre venues in the city are affected by railway noise. It’s
surprising just how many of them are built near railway lines. Certainly, some of them have treatment
for it - Angel Place, the latest one, is on isolators.
The irony in all of this is the quieter you isolate a space from outside noise, and prepare the rooms for
fine acoustics, the better the condition to hear the train that’s going through. And that’s been an
amazing balance that we’ve had to go through. When you cut out the sounds of the birds and the
mowers and the traffic, you are making the conditions even better to hear the rumble.
To provide the isolators themselves, which are the rubber pads, or the large spring boxes which came
from Germany for the recital halls, is one side of it, but the other is the complexity that adds to the
structure of the building. Laying the concrete slab on the ground is very simple compared to laying it
on a suspended beam system that sits on rubber pads or springs.

Was this one of the contributors to the cost exceeding initial expectations?
There is no doubt that designing to mitigate the impact of railway rumble through the rock is very
expensive on any project. On this site it is over a large area.

And that cost hadn’t been fully allowed for.

The extent of the isolation could never have been foreseen. A very important part of the core
infrastructure of this building is the actions that were taken to research and design to deal with the
problem. A lot of considered engineering, a lot of time, a lot of effort was put in - and the run-off
construction implications were quite large.
When you isolate a building like this, you no longer connect the reinforcement of the steel, to the rock
via the footings – which is how most buildings get their stability. The building is ‘floating’ above the
rock on fine blocks of rubber or on the spring boxes. It then needs a lot of bracing to deal with any
lateral loads - including potential earthquakes. Those structural issues become quite complex when you
deal with rooms that are 12 metres tall (recital halls and workshop). You can imagine a box 12 metres
tall sitting on the pads – and in total there are 15 spring boxes under each recital hall; you’ve got to
come up with ways so that if there was some horizontal force (like an earthquake), it can’t move.
That’s been quite an exercise in itself for the design team, and then to communicate to the builders, so
that they don’t bridge the cavities, causing sound transfer, has been very important.
The other performing spaces
So tell me about the other performing spaces.
We should talk about a philosophy for all of the performing spaces, which includes Verbrugghen. Our
acoustic consultants, Kirkegaard and Associates, who have expertise in facilities for music, have a
philosophy that you first build a ‘cave’ and then place a changeable (but controllable) amount of
absorption within it. So we have built very hard rooms – concrete floors, concrete walls, concrete roof,
of certain proportions and size, and great height to…

…which themselves are of acoustically devised measurements…

…yes, and then they bring into that ‘cave’ an adjustable amount of sound absorbing devices. There is
absorption in the seats – and the seats have been designed by DJRD/Kirkegaard and built in
Wellington, New Zealand. They have very heavy plywood shells and relatively thin, shaped cushions –
they are shaped so that they provide support where required but are not over padded – or over
absorbent. Though we’ve thinned them down for acoustic reasons, they will have good comfort. All of
the performance spaces have adjustable velour banners which are brought in mechanically as required.
So a technician or the stage manager can set the room up for different uses by switching the banners to
come down or sit at different heights or retract completely. (There’s also a banner and curtain system at
Angel Place to adjust that hall). The banners or curtains retract back into a hard container - where the
sound can’t get at them – to provide the ‘brightest’ room condition. In the music workshop the heavy
curtains under the balconies can be retracted into the under-seat storeroom. And in Verbrugghen Hall,
the banners lower down into a box which is on the balcony behind the seats.
Each of those rooms has a different function. The two recital halls have fixed seating for 116, and then
removable seats to take the numbers up to 150. They have the function of being lecture theatres but
also provide prime recital space for soloists and small ensembles.
The music workshop is a room designed for two performance and rehearsal functions in the original
brief - a small opera theatre and a large rehearsal room – for large orchestras, large jazz groups, and
any groups that need a large volume for rehearsal. We redesigned the room so it could be used as a
flexible space for those functions. It also has a third function as a large lecture theatre. It started life as
almost a gymnasium type of space – that is, a big, square box. In discussion, there was a real desire
from the Conservatorium that it not be a black box theatre. We started to manipulate the room and try
to give it a special character of its own, like no other music or theatre space in Sydney. I think it’s
going to be a really interesting space: to see how the Conservatorium and the ‘city’ likes it and uses it
in the future.
So, it’s created with a fixed bank of seats, and side balconies, and the balconies are shaped so that they
take on the character of opera boxes when the hall is used in opera performance mode. It has a vast
stage platform that can be moved down to create the orchestra pit and when it is down it defines the
stage immediately. For opera training or rehearsal or performance, there can be a stage (that has a good
width) and orchestra pit, and by pulling out the movable seating and opening up a floor pit, you can
create a full wedge of seating – the total number of 270 seats - with the ‘boxes’ to the sides. And we
hope we create the character of that, but create a training venue for opera that is very usable.

The pit for orchestra would only contain a fairly small orchestra. What was the thinking there?
Ed McCue has prepared layouts for different orchestras – 34 for The Magic Flute – and 51 for
Wozzeck. It clearly can’t be 90 and it’s not a large opera theatre. Like all buildings it has its limits but
it has flexibility in its types of spaces.
The other function which was seen to happen in here, with great enthusiasm from people like Peter
McCallum (Assistant Principal), was as a great venue for other forms of music being developed within
the Con, especially in the music technology and the jazz area. And because it’s a space with catwalks
for special lighting and effects – it will also have a large video screen – the ability to perform and
experiment with mixed media should become an interesting option. So I guess out of financial
stringency, the mini opera theatre and its fly tower disappeared and it morphed into something very
interesting with DJRD/Kirkegaards development.
Of course, we’re hopeful that all the parties that use the space – opera, jazz, orchestra rehearsal, soloist
rehearsal, lecture, music technology – find that it is good for what they are using it for, not just average
for everybody. That’s the really important thing about flexibility. It often doesn’t work, and becomes
the lowest common denominator. We believe that we’ve given the room a character because of its
shapes and its size where it still focuses on the performer. Ed McCue has certainly made its acoustic
devices so that it can be tuned for a soloist singing in a bright room or for a big band that needs to
absorption - otherwise they are going to go deaf. It’s going to be very interesting to see that room being
commissioned.
And if you get into jazz and electronic music, you want almost total absorption from the surfaces.
Correct. You can imagine in that mode, all of the side curtains will be down so that the two walls will
have the soft velour – two layers of velour separated by battens in the middle hanging [a small
distance] off the walls – and we have these large acoustic ‘clouds’ between the catwalks in the middle
of the hall that can be raised and lowered. So if you want more absorption they should be lowered to
about six metres above the floor, and if you want the room to be more bright, you raise them, reducing
the amount of airspace between the slab, which is the reflector, and the wall fabric. So a single voice
would probably be best with them up high, where amplified jazz would happen with them low.
Of course, as architects, what we’re looking for is an exciting room, where the colours and the mood is
right and it has a great quality. What’s lovely in all of the rooms is while the musicians have wanted
high light levels on the music, other people didn’t want it high so they’re all on dimmers and you can
lower it down. But what that’s doing, because we have these huge floors, these massive stages, in fine
timber which is blackbutt from northern NSW – and the lights have warm coloured lamps - and they hit
the floor and send this golden glow back onto everything. It really is, I think, quite gorgeous. We’ve
contrasted that with some dark colour, in the Music Worlshop especially, and we’ve used a lot of
timber panelling on the walls. The rooms do have a special character –and nothing like a gymnasium,
and I think that’s great. Even though if you look up, the trusses and all the steelwork is up there, you
see all the theatre lights, so the bare bones are there, but the effort, and the money, has gone in down
low near the musicians. We’ve struck a line and said above that, it’s painted blockwork.

I’ve noticed that in the recital halls – some sort of besser block surface on the upper walls.
Yes?

I mean, personally, that was perhaps my one big disappointment.

There is a contrast in finish.

It looked a bit too brutal.

When you see the curtains down, you’ll see the rooms have a totally different quality. But really strict
budget decisions were made. We wanted a lot more terrazzo in the foyer, we wanted a lot more finishes
on the walls, we wanted ceilings - but we didn’t get them. Many things were redesigned several times
to try to pull the project to the budget. The last impression anyone should get (from the over-run and
the hype) was that it was carte blanche to do whatever we want. It was hugely restricted. Lots of things
we would have done in other public buildings we didn’t achieve in this building. I may give advice in
20 years time on refurbishing and finishing the building.

(Laughs) The one space you haven’t dealt with yet in that strip of performing spaces is the jazz café.
What’s the story there?
The café has been designed for high absorption for amplified music and for food service there from the
morning. Students and staff should be able to get meals there as they would on any university campus.
After dinner it should be able to kick into late night mode. It has a food service function and also a
licensed bar. It has direct access from the [Macquarie Street] forecourt and from inside the
Conservatorium and the security can be switched to allow access from either – public or Con, and
that’s an important part of how it should work.
It’s been set for licensing for 200 people. It has a mezzanine to assist with those numbers. High
absorption - we have a special ceiling with 100mms of insulation and some wall panelling. It’s
designed to take curtains on the walls should they become desirable and it has bars and sockets ready to
take theatre lighting. Amplification systems are not part of the work we’ve done but conduits and cable
routes are in place as well as the ability to add dimmer racks and theatre lighting. It has a substantial
kitchen area and should be able to service the numbers quite easily.
Seeing daylight
During the day the penetration of light provides a wonderful quality. This thing of getting light in is
important and should be explained briefly. We developed on the Government Architect scheme the
jazz club being a light source [for itself and adjacent spaces]; we developed an early idea for a circular
light well for the library as a two-storey court with a glass roof as a way to get light into that area.
We’ve used the foyer as a large skylight to get light down several levels and illuminate this space.
We’ve used a series of four courtyards along the railway tunnel to drop light into these 15 metre wide
structural and sound-rated studios along the east, and we have skylights which drop light into the high
school zone. When you walk the building corridors you go from light to light and hopefully you get a
sense of orientation through those light wells and courts. We also hope at night that the building glows
as a large lantern. You have to remember that a major elevation of this building is its top! and on its
west side it has the high-rise city and we think that will be a fascinating roofscape to look onto at night
and we know because it’s the Royal Botanic Gardens in the daytime that it will become a fascinating
garden area to walk and to look onto.
The studios and practice rooms
The studios are all acoustically treated by building them as boxes within boxes.
That’s right. The studios, practice rooms, seminar rooms, ensemble rooms and music technology rooms
are all built in the same way. There’s a reinforced concrete base slab, there are masonry walls that are
150mm thick concrete block. And then inside the space we put resilient pads on which are laid two
sheets of plywood on which are built steel stud and plasterboard walls fixed to the blockwork using
resilient fixings only. Then a ceiling is suspended and it has an absorptive layer of tiles with plaster
board sheets above it so that on the one hand it is providing absorption and on the other is reducing the
amount of sound passing into the air space, hence activating the floor above. That construction has
been used in hundreds of rooms, and relies also on a "door suite" that is a steel door frame, fully
grouted with concrete, a double glazed sidelight to provide vision into and out of the room, and a heavy
door with acoustic seals. These rooms are designed to allow musicians to work freely in their own
space while not intruding on the musicians beside them, and at the same time allow sound to bleed to
the corridors so that when you are walking in the building it is not dead silent. You are able to hear and
feel the music and we believe that will activate the building in a way that will make it fascinating.

So the sound can escape into the corridor but not with such strength that it’s going to go back into
another studio.
Yes. But there’s no such thing as total sound isolation when you are dealing with sound at varying
levels and frequencies. A piano from top to bottom is extremely difficult to deal with. A trumpet
playing at full blast or an opera singer are difficult to entirely isolate – and a perfectly quiet
environment is death to a building, and a school. The other side of that is that rooms that are made for
perfect silence are very difficult to live in. It’s really important that as people move in over the next
few weeks, they turn their rooms into what they want them to be and personalise them in the way that
they can sit comfortably within them and work, be it writing, reading, talking to students, or rehearsing
music together. The studios have acoustic absorption within them that is adjustable. We see that this
personalisation as very important, to get over the eeriness that you may get in rooms like this.

The absorption that you get within the room, or the amount of echo, does that have much effect on the
transmission of sound out of the room? You could have quite a live room that is acoustically isolated…
That’s right. The rooms are designed to be quite bright to start with. The practice rooms all have carpet
on the floor, absorptive surfaces on two walls and the ceiling. By their very brief, they were seen to
need more absorption. But students should feel that they can express themselves quite freely in terms
of volume.
The studios are much larger rooms – up to 28 square metres. They have an acoustically absorbing
ceiling but they have a hard floor and hard walls with some panelling for two of the walls, with the idea
that you can add more absorption if that is a strict requirement of your discipline or your way of
working is there. Originally, it was intended that all the removable panels would start their life in a
store-room and everybody would go into their studios as bright, hard rooms, and from there, with the
acousticians, they would add a certain amount of absorption to their taste. Kierkegaard, in the States
showed us some rooms that had been customised by their users for the year. We went into room in
Cincinnati where there were two beautiful grand pianos, desks, books, bookshelves that the owner of
the room had brought in rugs on the floor and on a couple of the walls. He had added the absorption he
wanted - to his own requirements. I think we’ll see - to some extent in the next few weeks and perhaps
in the next twelve months - see the extent to which people customise these spaces. Maybe rooms used
by full time staff members will be more likely to be customised than rooms that are shared by many
part-time teachers.
… and don’t feel ownership…
That ownership will become an interesting issue.

Dick Letts is Executive Director of the Music Council of Australia.