Sydney Opera House Concert Hall

Schuler Shook had the opportunity to work with ARM Architecture and Mueller BBM Acoustics to redesign the largest of these spaces, the Concert Hall, to rectify many of these initial issues.

The Concert Hall had a number of challenges including poor acoustics and difficulties with loading, rigging, seating changeover, and other technical operations that were addressed by the new design. 

Mueller BBM required better reflectors above and on the walls over the stage to increase early sound reflections back to the stage and audience. They also needed a large number of acoustic banners to lower the reverberation time of the room when presenting amplified performances. Schuler Shook worked with the design team to provide rigging designs to allow the ceiling reflectors to be oriented in variety of ways depending on the needs of the performance below. We designed an innovative suspension mechanism that allows for the reflectors to be deployed in various horizontal positions for acoustic performance and tilted vertically for amplified performance when they need to stay clear of show rigging and banners. The acoustic banner design included several innovations to ensure that they are completely hidden when not in use. Banners extend from retractable drawers on the walls and from recesses in the ceiling.

Before the redesign, loading into the Concert Hall was challenging, and there was very little storage to support orchestra equipment including stage risers. We worked with the design team to redesign the stage floor to include orchestra risers than can automatically deploy to create the riser arrangement. These riser systems include variable height stair units and other innovations to ensure that the stage can be set up with minimal manual handling. The stage front extension lift was also redesigned to allow for additional audience seating to be quickly installed and removed. This was previously a several hour process that limited how quickly the concert hall could be turned over from one performance type to another.

Schuler Shook’s innovative planning and design work has resulted in enhanced technical capabilities, allowing the stage to be transformed for different performance types faster, safer, and more efficiently.