SeongNam Arts Centre – Seongnam, Zuid-Korea

In 2005 the City of SeongNam inaugurated a new performing arts centre: SeongNam Arts Centre. The building complex comprises four interconnected buildings as the architectural concept:

1. Opera House
2. Concert Hall
3. Ensemble Theatre
4. Facility Building (offices etc.).

Opera House
The Opera House comprises an Opera Theatre with an audience capacity of 1,800. PBTA optimized the acoustic and theatre design for opera: room volume, auditorium shape, optimization of early sound reflections, optimization of sight lines for the audience etc. The Reverberation Time (RT) is 1.5 second, the internationally agreed optimum value for opera. The acoustic and sight line design was made based on the successful example of the New Luxor Theatre in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Crucial for the acoustic result of such a theatre is optimization of the proscenium zone and effective variable acoustic for use other than opera and classic ballet. To increase the reverberation for symphonic concerts a removable orchestra shell is installed on stage (which can be stored by flying this shell into a dedicated area in the fly tower). When in use on stage, the orchestra shell plus the variable volume and absorption above the transparent ceiling, increase the RT to 1.7 second. Additionally the SIAP electronic acoustic architecture system the reverberation, loudness, spaciousness, warmth etc. can be optimized further for each specific type of music.
This way the optimum RT of 2.2 seconds for large symphony orchestra playing the late-romantic symphonies of Brahms, Mahler, Bruckner etc. sound to the European concert halls they were composed for. Similarly a 3 second RT for a large choir.

Concert Hall
For classical music the complex facilitates a 1,000 seat concert hall. The acoustic design is made for small to average symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, recitals etc. The hall shape is an elongated octagon, which offers the desired spaciousness combined with clarity for which vineyard type halls like the Berlin Philharmonic are so well-liked

Ensemble Theatre
The range of complementary halls in this complex is completed with a medium sized multipurpose ensemble theatre, which seats a maximum audience of 400 people in a number of different audience-to-stage formats. For optimum flexibility in practise, the auditorium floor comprises a number of elevators (raisable floor segments). It is an experimental theatre and concert hall. Drama, opera, classical music are all part of the programming of this hall. For optimum speech intelligibility and sound reinforcement, the RT was kept short at 1.0 second. A removable orchestra shell on stage (storable in the fly tower) and an electronic acoustic architecture system (SIAP) make this hall really multipurpose in the right meaning of the word

Our scope of work

• Auditorium acoustics of the three halls
• Variable Acoustics (incl. electronic acoustic architecture)
• Sight line studies and optimization in Opera House.