When the National Arts Centre opened in 1969, it was Canada’s premier venue for performing arts. In the 50 years hence, the facility’s technical systems have aged and the once-chic brutalist architectural could best be described as dated and unwelcoming. As Canada celebrates its sesquicentennial, the NAC’s public spaces have been expanded to welcome the public with transparent facades and new performance, education and gathering spaces that create a beacon for the arts amongst Confederation Square and Parliament Hill.  

The performances spaces are refreshed with new electrical and technical systems as well as improved sound isolation between the Centre’s four main performance venues. Southam Hall, the Centre’s 2,300-seat opera house, is invigorated with a re-seated audience chamber to improve audience access, comfort, and the room’s acoustic response. 

Threshold has worked with the National Arts Centre Orchestra to produce its optimal sound within Southam though incremental changes that integrate re-tuning and re-deployment of its electronic enhancement system and a new orchestra enclosure for the 2018-19 season. 

From the warmth and familiarity of the finest concert halls to the sensory kaleidoscope of immersive media, great sound is achieved through collaboration of many disciplines that is steeped in awareness of the boundaries between science and art.  

Our individual backgrounds in acoustics, music, mathematics, physics, engineering, and architecture help us collectively achieve excellence through an informed process of discovery and evaluation.

Because acoustics are intrinsic to architecture, not add-ins to a completed design, we help the Design Team make smart decisions oriented toward what the owners and users need and expect from their building. Basing our interactions in good will, candor, and respect have helped us build long-term relationships with our clients and collaborators.  

Wheaton College has long cultivated young musicians in a tight-knit community outside of Chicago. The program grew so much in recent decades, however, that the Conservatory burst at the seams, needing expanded space for faculty and students alike. The construction of a new science building on campus led to the availability of Armerding Hall, a decidedly non-musical building, for renovation as a new home for the Conservatory on the central campus quad. 

Armerding was gutted and refitted to serve the everyday needs of the Conservatory's faculty and students. Teaching studios and practice rooms were retrofit into the existing superstructure, and an existing lecture hall gained a story of additional height, becoming a new 100-seat recital hall with concerts expected 200 days a year. As this space moved through the design process, we modeled it alongside two campus venues well known to the faculty. Several of the faculty gamely (and expertly) allowed us to record them in an anechoic chamber. When played back as sources in the auralizations, they heard themselves perform in renditions of the existing spaces as well as the unbuilt recital hall, a moving experience for everyone involved.

Acoustic isolation strategies applied to the original superstructure allow for practice and instruction sessions throughout the building without distractions and give students and faculty places to work that convey a sense of value in the Conservatory's everyday activity, not just in the final performances. AV systems further support advanced instruction and recording capabilities.

A second phase of the project will include a new 650-seat concert hall and the college’s first dedicated rehearsal hall for their formidable choral program.

Performing Arts

We’ve worked with tiny off-off Broadway stages, cultural flagships, festival tents, and even performance lawns and landscapes. That’s right, we don’t even need walls to do what we do best. 

Worship

When it comes to worship spaces, we have helped with new organs, new buildings, newish spaces with retro-fitting issues, and simply bringing silence into rooms for contemplation.

Experimental

Whether it’s a 40-foot tornado or a 40-channel spatial audio system with video mapping, the building that houses it is as critical to the experience as the installation itself.