Why your living room booms at 43 Hz
Every room favours a few bass notes. You can find yours with a tape measure and one division.
Every room has a figure.
Nodal designs concert halls, studios and music rooms. We find the shape of the sound first, then draw the building around it.
A hall is an instrument that nobody gets to practise on. It is tuned once, in concrete and timber, and then it plays every concert for a hundred years. So we find its figure first: where sound will gather, where it will thin, which notes it will favour. Then we move the walls.
Selected rooms
See the work
We draw the sound before the building.
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Listen
We record the site for a day and a night, and we ask the players what they cannot hear.
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Model
We build the room in software and at 1:10 in plywood, and find its figure at every octave.
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Tune
We stay on site until the last panel is set, and we come back after the first season.
“For eleven years I asked the brass to play quieter. In the new hall I ask the strings to enjoy themselves.”
Artistic director, Orquestra de Câmara do Minho
Have a room in mind?
Tell us what it has to do and who has to play in it. We answer every enquiry within three working days.