The Melbourne Recital Centre and the MTC Theatre’s status as world-class venues has been confirmed with a win at the 2009 Association of Consulting Engineers Australia Awards for Excellence in Brisbane.
Arup won the ‘Specialist Services’ category for work on the Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre projects.
These new performance spaces, which opened in early 2009, set an international benchmark for future acoustic design.
The interior of the 1000-seat Elisabeth Murdoch Hall at the Melbourne Recital Centre is clad in Australian hoop pine with patterned and pixelated surfaces that diffuse sound, enhance the timbre of the instruments and create a profound harmony and clarity of sound. The hall is the archetypal shoebox-shaped concert hall, but the carefully sculpted geometry results in amazing acoustic intimacy, and excellent sightlines from all seats. This space has been purpose built for small ensemble music.
The MTC’s 500-seat Sumner Theatre has a unique interior with a back-lit 'word wall' comprising quotes from great playwrights. The MTC can change the mood of the venue using different coloured lights depending on the genre of the performance. The theatre is an atmospheric space that has been designed to optimise acoustics and sightlines.
State of the art theatrical systems, including a forestage lift, a modular stage, power flying and a versatile adjustable proscenium, have ensured that the space is flexible and can be used in a variety of ways by imaginative set designers. This degree of flexibility is in keeping with the MTC’s cutting edge repertoire.
Arup, provided the acoustics and theatre consulting services, as well as theatre technical systems advice for the project.
The performance spaces in both buildings have been engineered for high performance sound insulation and careful control of building services noise levels so that they are free from extraneous noise, offering the performers unrestricted artistic freedom. Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, being completely structurally isolated from the rest of the building, is one of the quietest performance spaces in Australia.
Arup Principal and Practice Leader for Arup's acoustics and theatre consultants, Andrew Nicol said: “Elisabeth Murdoch Hall sounds very, very good. Nothing goes near this quality of sound anywhere else in Australia.
“The silence we have achieved in the space is quite literally arresting. The clarity of the acoustic will also demand great skill from the musicians performing there, driving them towards perfection and pure revelry in their music.”
The Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre is the result of an extraordinary collaboration spanning five years between Arup, Major Projects Victoria, architect Ashton Raggatt McDougall and builder Bovis Lend Lease.