roy-thomson-hall: Roy Thomson Hall, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Designed 1976 with Francisco Kripacz
Accoustical design by Theodore Schulz
Roy Thomson Hall was conceived as an enormous acoustic instrument with adjustable reflective discs, and absorptive banners in the form of tubes of wool, which could be lowered into or removed through the hall ceiling to tune the reverberation time of the hall to the type of music.
The banner array of 2000 items of wool tubing was initially conceived as quite brightly coloured and left up to the artist, Mariette Rousseau Vermette. Francisco, with his keen colour sense, took on the interiors task and tackled the banners first. He worked with Mariette to propose a new palette, one which was muted and subtle, in place of the former strident palette. He picked a mixture of greys, to harmonize with the concrete walls, merging gradually with a lighter palette of creams as the arrays approached the chandelier in the centre. Interspersed amongst the greys, which reflected the calmness of the architectural volume, was an occasional deep wine, purple or scarlet. These occasional strands of colour spiced the greys around it lending luminosity to the creams surrounding the “oculus” chandelier. It was a brilliant solution, multi-layered, rich, yet calming, bridging the oval of convex concrete panels enclosing the space with a ceiling of mysterious impenetrable depth.
Photo by Fiona Spalding-Smith
See "Performance Buildings" section for more Roy Thomson Hall
