In thinking about acoustics for retrofit buildings, sometimes a building or client or architect (or even all three!) might offer an opportunity to evaluate success using different rules. After all, any building will have a certain acoustical character to it. Sometimes working with the building, rather than attempting to cancel or overcome its acoustic character, best addresses the needs of its community.
THE MOMENTARY
For example, in 2012, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art opened in Bentonville, Ark. A year later, the Kraft Co. fermentation plant closed for good. In a way, it signaled a changing of the guard for the area: fewer dairy farmers, many more employees to a knowledge-based economy. Current estimates place the inflow of new residents at 36 people per day, drawn by the robust headquarters of Walmart and, nearby, Tyson and JB Hunt. Concurrently, the Walton family—backers of the majority of projects happening in the area—wanted amenities that could compete with either coast: parks, museums, performance spaces.
As Bentonville and greater northwest Arkansas (NWA) grew, so did the need for additional cultural spaces. Even the iconic Crystal Bridges campus quickly ran out of space for traveling and temporary exhibits. Hence, The Momentary: a museum dedicated to temporary exhibits, to more time-based art and performances, and experimental art. The Kraft property was soon considered for this new museum, as an extension of and sister building to Crystal Bridges. Many Bentonville natives, who had lived in NWA for generations, had family connections to the Kraft fermentation plant. Shuttered or not, it was a beloved landmark for the town. Respecting that connection meant retaining as much of its industrial identity as possible.
Spaces in the building ranged from banal storage rooms with low ceilings to a soaring 60-foot volume that once held a towering, missile-shaped tank of cheese product (Velveeta, perhaps). Two rooms, the multi-bay truck wash and hall that housed fermentation tanks, were vaguely suggestive of performance spaces. Pipes for water, steam and ammonia (used for sanitizing) ran building-wide, elements that knit the hodgepodge into a loose whole. The Waltons made clear that this abandoned infrastructure was part of the building’s identity and that only what was hopelessly in the way could be removed. The hulking original boiler was retained in full—an art piece unto itself.
ACOUSTIC INTERVENTIONS
In its original life, the RØDE House was the truck-washing station: Trucks drove in one end and were chemically sanitized on a sloped floor (which looked enticingly like a seating rake in a performance space) before driving out the other end. Today, the RØDE House is a multi-form concert and convening venue for audiences of up to 600. Its roof structure, which was just high enough for a truck wash, is quite low for a concert venue, but the lighting, audio and video designs were developed accordingly.
Acoustic treatments on the ceiling took advantage of the spaces between the downturned legs of the concrete double-tees. In alternating bays, foam was applied directly to the underside of the roof slab or on perforated plywood spanning between the legs of the tees—in the latter case creating bass traps to control low-frequency amplified sound. Wall treatment consists of 1/2-inch wool felt hanging several inches from the concrete. The felt is perforated with a pattern taken from the floor plan of the building at different heights, so its effect is more diffusive in the lower volume of the room and more absorptive up high. The result is outstanding clarity and great intensity for the musicians and the crowd.
The Fermentation Hall is just what it sounds like: Tanks of milk were fermented there to become familiar Kraft products. During design, the Fermentation Hall was nicknamed the 7-Second Room because, once the tanks were removed, a single hand clap would hang in the air seven seconds, or longer, in the empty concrete volume.
The Fermentation Hall, like the RØDE House with walls and roof built of concrete double-tees that one might see in a parking garage, could have been screechy and harsh, but sandblasting the glaze off the concrete let its natural porosity take care of that problem. Some simple black fiberglass absorption behind suitably industrial metal mesh on the back wall of the room and some canted medium density fiberboard reflectors between the legs of the tees were the only other fixed treatments required. Acoustic banners deploy on the three other walls to give the room an acoustic vocabulary stretching from cinema and dance parties at one end to Gregorian chant at the other. The room also is outfitted with a simple ambisonics audio system that, with a couple simple moves, transforms a room built to house rotting milk into a space with limitless potential for immersive sound sculptures.
Outside the two performance spaces, the project embraced the building’s quirkiness. The Velveeta tank is gone, leaving a volume known as the Tower, which is a lot like a theater fly tower with platforms and perches at various heights that are great for performances and art installations that are more vertical in nature. Mid-sized rooms and cold lockers easily became smaller, more museum-like areas for artwork. Even the smaller, more banal rooms became a recording studio and artist-in-residence suite.
Acoustic treatments were mainly oriented to keeping the gallery spaces comfortable for visitors and conducive to sound and video installations through simple felt and foam absorption discreetly placed on ceilings. Thus tamed, and with audio, video and data infrastructure threaded in the same manner as the original piping (and often following the same paths), the galleries are ready for anything.
BREAKING THE RULES
With client, architect and acoustician aligned in an ethos of lightly taming the building and embracing its quirks, normal—perhaps traditional—measures of success fell to the side, to the holistic benefit of the museum at large. In the RØDE House, the ceiling is too low; the Fermentation Hall is wildly reverberant; the Tower is too high and not fully enclosed. But nothing plays by the rules here. This is, after all, a building where skateboards and bikes are allowed indoors. Sound may bleed from a room and that acts as an invitation to others outside. Locals can relax and enjoy the building for what it is.
A neon sign across the exterior of the building loudly proclaims, “You Belong Here”, and means it. One of the first installations was Nick Cave’s Until, exploring race relations, gender policy and justice. The aesthetic of a postindustrial space whose industrial history is intertwined with art seems just alien enough for everyone to feel equal as they enter.
PHOTOS: Tom Harris unless otherwise noted
RETROFIT TEAM
ACOUSTIC AND AV DESIGN: Threshold Acoustics LLC
ARCHITECT: Wheeler Kearns Architects
INTERIOR DESIGNER: FODA Design
LIGHTING CONSULTANT: Lux Populi
THEATER DESIGNER: Schuler Shook
GENERAL CONTRACTOR, CONSTRUCTION MANAGER: Flintco
MATERIALS
ACOUSTICAL CEILINGS: MARS/MARS High-NRC Logix Acoustical Panels from USG
SUSPENSION GRID: Fineline DXF from USG
ACOUSTIC FOAM: WILLTEC Flat Sheet Panels from Pinta Acoustic
PERFORATED FELT: FilzFelt
AMBISONICS AUDIO SYSTEM: d&b Soundscape from d&b Audiotecknik
ACOUSTIC BANNERS: Sound Control Banner System from iWeiss